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LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 



By the same Author 

ENGLAND IN THE AGE OF 
WYCLIFFE. 8vo. 

GARIBALDI'S DEFENCE OF 
THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 
(1848-9). With 7 Maps and 35 
Illustrations. 8vo. 

GARIBALDI AND THE THOU- 
SAND (May, i860). With 5 Maps 
and numerous Illustrations. 8vo. 

GARIBALDI AND THE MAKING 
OF ITALY (May-November, i860). 
With 4 Maps and numerous Illus- 
trations. 8vo. 

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

NEW YORK LONDON BOMBAY 

CALCUTTA AND MADRAS 




^ 



li^-'Aca^t/eo. 2 ^nOy 0^i/ 'l^tey. ,^^^^ 



LORD GREY OF 
THE REFORM BILL 



BEING THE 



LIFE OF CHARLES, SECOND EARL GREY 



BY 

GEORGE MACAULAY TREVELYAN 

LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 

AUTHOR OF 

' GARIBALDI, ETC.,' ' LIFE OF JOHN BRIGHT ' 

' SCENES FROM ITALY's WAR ' 



WU^H PORTRAITS AND OTHER 
ILLUSTRATIONS 



LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 

BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 

1920 



To THE Memory of 
ALBERT, FOURTH EARL GREY 

AT WHOSE DESIRE 
THIS WORK WAS UNDERTAKEN 



PREFACE 

When the late Earl Grey invited me, in 191 3, to 
make use of the Howick Papers, in order to write the 
life of his grandfather, I asked him whether I might be 
allowed a freedom of historical comment more exten- 
sive than would be proper in the biography of a states- 
man recently dead. The permission was granted with 
characteristic readiness and generosity. My work was 
interrupted by an interval of more than four years of 
war, during which the late Lord Grey died, but his son, 
in the same spirit, desired me to complete the book. 

The original biography of the Reform Bill Premier, 
begun by his children for the benefit of a genera- 
tion that had known him, was suspended midway,^ 
and the work had to be undertaken afresh. After 
the lapse of so many decades, the nature of the task 
had changed. A very different book is now wanted 
from that which would have been welcomed at 
a time when Russell, Palmerston, and other leading 
actors in the conflict of the great Reform Bill were 
still in public life, and when the clubs were full of 
men who remembered the Prince Regent and the 
Rotten Boroughs. Many debates, incidents, and in- 
trigues that convulsed Brooks's, and were long held 
in memory there, have now lost the halo of traditional 
interest, without acquiring historical importance. The 
biographer, for example, is no longer called upon to 
narrate in detail the series of once famous negotiations 
by which Grey evaded office between 1809 and 18 12. 
On the other hand, the trend and change of middle 
and working class opinion during the forty years of 

^ Some Account of the Life and Opinions of Charles, Second Earl 
Grey, by Lieut.-Gen. Hon. C. Grey, 1861, goes no further than the 
year 18 17. 



viii PREFACE 

the movement for Parliamentary Reform over which 
Grey presided, are of deeper interest than ever in the 
historical perspective of our own day, and give unity 
and permanent value to Lord Grey's career, as viewed 
down the lengthening ages. 

For this reason I have not only used the rich 
treasury of the Howick Papers themselves, and the 
documents relative to my subject in Holland House 
and Lambton Castle, most kindly put at my disposi- 
tion by Lord Ilchester and Lord Durham, but I have 
studied — among the Additional MSS. in the British 
Museum and among the Home Office Papers — the 
currents on which the ship of Reform was launched 
by Grey in the period of the first French Revolution, 
and the all-powerful but dangerous flood-tide on which 
he brought the vessel into harbour in 1832. 

The object of the present volume is to recall the 
life of a great historical character to the public of our 
day. In an age when the law of perpetual and rapid 
change is accepted as inevitable, and the difficulty is 
to obtain progress without violence, there may be profit 
in the story of a statesman who, after a period of long 
stagnation and all too rigid conservatism, initiated in 
our country a yet longer period of orderly democratic 
progress, and at the critical moment of the transition 
averted civil war and saved the State from entering on 
the vicious circle of revolution and reaction. 

I am grateful to Sir Algernon West for access to 
letters of Lady Grey, and to Lord Spencer for Grey's 
letters to Althorp. I am much indebted to Mr. and 
Mrs. Hammond for help and suggestions ; and to Lord 
Halifax for putting at my disposal, with indefatigable 
kindness, his traditional knowledge of the Grey family 
in that period, and of the circle in which they moved. 

G. M. TREVELYAN. 
December, 191 9. 



CONTENTS 

BOOK I 
THE FORMATION OF PARTIES 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. Boyhood and Youth — Whig Society and 
Politics on the Eve of the French 
Revolution . . . . . i 

II. The Friends of the People . . 28 

III. Fox, Grey, and the Party Split — 

Loyalists and Democrats — War — 
June 1792 to February 1793 . . S3 

IV. The Great Repression — Hardy's Trial 

— Grey's Reform Motions — 1 793-1 797 73 

V. The Secession — The Foxite Whigs at 

Home — Howick — Ireland — 1 797-1 801 98 

BOOK II 
THE STAGNATION OF PARTIES 
Introductory . . . . .117 

I. The * Euthanasia ' and the Confusion 
OF Parties — Peace and War — 1801- 
1805 ^^^ 



K CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

II. The Ministry of All the Talents — 
February 1806 to March 1807 — The 
Death of Fox . . . .142 

III. Shades of Opposition — Tilsit to 

Waterloo — 1807-18 15 . . .160 

IV. Whigs, Radicals, and Reform — Peter- 

loo AND THE Second Repression — 
Home Life — Lambton and Brougham 
— The Queen's Trial — Canning and 
the Whig Party — 18 16-1827 . .180 

V. The Tide Sets in — 1 828-1 830 . . 206 



BOOK III 
THE REFORM BILL 

I. Fall of Wellington — Formation of the 
Grey Ministry— Difficulties of the 
First Months, November 1830 to 
February 1831 . . . ' "^33 

II. The Preparation of the Bill — Novem- 
ber 1830 to February 1831 . .261 

III. The Struggle for the Bill — King, 

Commons, and People — March to 
October 1831 .... 280 

IV. The Struggle for the Bill — King, 

Peers, and People — October 1831 to 
April 1832 . . . . . 311 

V. The Struggle for the Bill — The 

' Days of May ' . . . . 337 



CONTENTS 



XI 



VI. After the Bill — Belgium Established — 
The First Reformed Parliament to 
THE Retirement of Lord Grey, July 

1834 

Epilogue — The Last Years, i 834-1 845 



350 

2^S 



APPENDIX 



A. 
B. 



D. 
E. 
F. 
G. 

H. 
J. 



APPENDICES 

PAGE 

'The Bill' in Embryo (1820) . . -371 

Grey's Views of Canning's Policy, 1822- 

1827 373 

The Question of Grey taking Office 

under Wellington, i 828-1 830 . . 376 

Formation of the Grey Ministry . '378 

The Framing of the Reform Bill . . 380 

The Dissolution of April 1831 . . 382 

'Bear' Ellice as Whip during the Reform 

Bill .,,.... 384 
Peer-making and the 'Days of May' . 385 
Lord Grey's Retirement. . . -391 

Genealogical Tree . . . facing p. 392 



INDEX 



393 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Charles, 2nd Earl Grey, k.g., i 764-1 845 Frontispiece 

From the picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence at Hozvick, 
about 1827. 

Facing page 

Sir Henry Grey, of Howick, Bart., 1722- 

1808, Uncle of the Prime Minister . 2 

From a picture at Hozoick. 

Charles Grey at the Time he left Eton . 9 

From the picture by Romney at Howick. 

Charles Grey, M.P., 1793 • • • 75 

From the picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence at Howick. 

Mary Elizabeth (Ponsonby), Lady Grey, 

1776-1861 ...... 83 

From the picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence at Howick. 

Some of the Grey Children on the Sea- 
shore NEAR Howick, 18 13 . . . 109 
From the picture by Henry Thomson^ R.A., at Howick. 

General Sir Charles Grey, of Fallodon. 
Afterwards first Earl Grey ; 1 729-1 807 ; 
father of the Prime Minister . . .146 

From the picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1795) at 
Howick. 

Howick, 1832 . . . . .185 

From a print at Howick. 



xiv ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing page 

The Queen's Trial in the House of Lords, 

1820 ...•••• ^-' 
Froffi an engraving after the painting by Sir George 
Hayter. 

Burdett, Cobbett, Althorp, Stanley . .216 

From ' H. B' Political Sketches. 
Prince Talleyrand and Lord Holland *A 

tete a tete' ^^9 

From ' U. B.' Political Sketches. 

The Bill in Committee— Wetherell Speaking 283 
From ' H. B.' Political Sketches. 



316 



' A Political Union ' : John Bull, Grey, 
William IV. . 

From ' H.B.' Political Sketches. 

Grey and Brougham Dining at Hounslow, 

May 1832 339 

From ' H. B.' Political Sketches. 

'John Bull Intervenes': Grey, John Bull, 

the King, Wellington .... 34° 
From ' H. B.' Political Sketches. 

The Reform Bill receiving the Royal Assent 
in the House of Lords . • • 349 

After the painting by Samuel W. Reynolds. 



LORD GREY 
OF THE REFORM BILL 

BOOK I 

THE FORMATION OF PARTIES 

CHAPTER I 

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH WHIG SOCIETY AND POLITICS 

ON THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

' At an age when most of those who distinguish themselves in life 
are still contending for prizes and Fellowships at college, he had won 
for himself a conspicuous place in Parliament. At twenty-three he had 
been thought worthy to be ranked with the veteran statesmen who 
appeared as the delegates of the British Commons at the bar of the 
British nobility.' — Macaulay on Charles Grey. 

The map of Britain shows England thrusting up a 
wedge far northward along its eastern coast, to touch 
the Tweed and claim the Till. This extremity of 
Northumberland consists of a long belt of low country- 
lying between the highest part of the Cheviots and the 
Northern Sea, arable along the coast, but some miles 
inland swelling up into moors. Moorland and arable 
alike are dominated by great presences — to the west 
the rounded mass of Cheviot Hill, and to the east the 
ocean, seen from every piece of rising ground when 



2 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

the day is clear, while the west wind is for ever tearing 
across, as a messenger between hills and sea. Since 
the days of Cuthbert on Holy Island it has been a 
fine coast for the breeding and rearing of men. It 
could not have been held for England without hard 
fighting, on a larger scale than in other parts of 
Northumberland, for it was a royal highroad of inva- 
sion between Scotland and England; Names such as 
Flodden and Etal, Bamborough and Dunstanborough, 
Alnwick and Warkworth recall, not the bickerings of 
border outlaws, but the strife of two great Kingdoms. 
In all this work the Greys had their full share. But, 
although they possessed land at Howick from 1319 
onwards, they seem not to have lived there during the 
period of the Border Wars. Only when that rough 
school of heroism and romance was about to be closed 
for ever we find, at the end of Elizabeth's reign, the 
* Greys of Howick ' setting up as a distinct local branch. 
When George III came to the throne these Greys 
of Howick were a numerous clan. The eldest. Sir 
Henry, uncle to the Reform Bill Premier, lived as a 
bachelor in the old peel tower of Howick, near the 
sea, perhaps already meditating the more habitable j 
mansion that twenty years later he built in a fortunate! 
hour. The only one of Sir Henry's brothers who concerns f 
our story was Charles Grey the elder, w^ho had already |j 
been wounded at Minden, and was destined to notable 
military services in another hemisphere, which earned 
him in the end the title of first Earl Grey of Howick. 
But he always lived, as a cadet of the family, not at 
Howick, but five miles off at Fallodon, a small country 
house half-way between the moors and the sea, which! 
his mother had brought into the Grey inheritance. 
Here, on March 13, 1764, his son Charles, the future 
Reform Bill Premier, was born, and not many weeks 
later, by the death of a baby brother, became the eldest 
of his generation.^ 

^ See genealogical tree at end of book. 




Sir Henry Grey, of Howick, Bart., 1722-1808. 
Uncle of the Prime Minister. 



From a picture at Howick. 



NORTHUMBERLAND 3 

Both Fallodon, his parents' house, where he was 
born, and Howick, his uncle's house, which he himself 
was to inhabit for the last forty-four years of his life, 
were familiar ground to him in his childhood, and in 
his schoolboy holidays. Fallodon and Howick both 
breathe the spell of that windy land between hills and 
sea, which few cast off if they have been bred in it, 
least of all the Greys in the cherished intervals between 
one bout of public service and the next. But it was 
Howick that most won the heart of Charles Grey the 
younger. It stands, drawn back a mile from the 
shore, between the lonely ruins of Dunstanborough and 
the little port of Alnmouth. That coast, since cele- 
brated by Turner and by Swinburne, was then bleakly 
unknown to good society, which had not yet developed 
a taste for such severe and distant joys. Their friends 
in London thought of the Greys, as old Chaucer 
thought of Alan de Strother, as coming from some 
place 

' Fer in the North, I can not telle where.' 

It would have been happier for Grey if yet more 
of his boyhood had been passed in the kindly North. 
But the custom of the age prevailed even with the 
most loving of parents, and at six years old he was 
sent to an ill-chosen school at Marylebone. There he 
remained miserably for three years, suffering from a 
series of illnesses. The first of these overtook him 
immediately after his arrival in the South, and the 
poor little sick child, separated by four long days* 
posting from his parents' care, was put in the sole 
charge of a nurse who lived, as luck would have it, at 
Tyburn. The first day when the boy of six was well 
enough to be taken out of doors she took him across 
the road to see a batch of Jews hung for forgery, and 
lest he should miss any of the sight mounted him on 
the shoulders of a grenadier. The dying contortions 
of the wretches as they were one by one turned off the 



4 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

cart, left such an impress on a mind more than ordin- 
arily sensitive that, in the reign of Victoria, the statesman 
who had passed the Reform Bill would wake sweating 
from a nightmare vision of this old horror of Hogarth's 
London. 

At nine years old he was sent to Eton, and remained 
there till he was seventeen (1773-178 1). It was here 
that he first touched the great world of politics and 
fashion, to which Eton was then an antechamber. Here 
he began a friendship of more than sixty years' dura- 
tion with Richard, afterwards Marquis Wellesley, the 
half-ally of his later political life ; here he formed a 
yet closer personal attachment with his more short- 
lived brother Liberals, Sam Whitbread and William 
Lambton.^ Canning was such a small boy when 
Grey left the school that we can hardly suppose 
that they had yet found occasion to dislike one 
another. 

Grey, I believe, gained much from Eton, but, at 
the risk of alienating from him a powerful body of 
opinion, I must confess that he was not a good * Old 
Etonian.' In the first year of his Reform Ministry he 
wrote to Wellesley on July 22, 1831, 'I am to be at 
Windsor on Sunday for [Eton] Speeches on Monday, 
where I have not been since I spoke myself fifty years 
ago.' He refused to send any of his numerous sons 
to a public school, on the ground that he himself had 
been taught nothing at the most famous of those 
establishments. This must be taken as a criticism 
directed at the limited aims of the curriculum and of 
the system, for he certainly got the best that Eton set 
out to provide. He succeeded there, socially and 
scholastically, and in those days athletic prowess was 
not indispensable. 

Some of Grey's school verses won a place in the 

^ Grey was in the Sixth Form 1780-1 ; Wellesley in 1778 ; Whit- 
bread in 1779-80; Lambton in 1782. 



ETON 5 

famous selection published some years later under the 
title ' Musae Etonenses.' Although, to judge by his 
strictures on the school course, he did not regard the 
writing of Latin verse as affording by itself a complete 
education, he was nevertheless much devoted to the 
lore of that peculiar art, which Milton did not disdain. 
In 1842 the octogenarian Marquis of Wellesley sent a 
volume containing his own Latin verses to Earl Grey, 
aged seventy-eight. The ex-Premier replied to the ex- 
Governor-General of India : * I remember well admiring 
when at Eton the beautiful exercises which are con- 
tained in this collection, and which then made so great 
an impression on me that I could still repeat many of 
them by heart.' When we remember what had happened 
in the world in East and West during the sixty and odd 
years that Grey was carrying about Wellesley's Eton 
verses in his head, and what parts the two boys had 
played in preserving the Imperium et Libertas of modern 
Rome, we may think that the schoolrooms as well as 
the playing fields of Eton have had their part in English 
history. 

The fact is that the Eton and Harrow education 
of that time was well directed towards a definite if in- 
sufficient end. It may have ill served some of the larger 
purposes of the community, but at least it forwarded the 
success in later life of the most important boys, those 
namely who were born to the purple of a seat in either 
House of Parliament, or who seemed likely by their 
talents to become recipients of a well-bestowed interest 
in a rotten borough. As Mr. Butler has admirably 
put it,^ the system of these schools 

aimed at the training of statesmen, at a time when statesmanship 
consisted largely in winning and retaining the confidence of an 
assembly of some six hundred gentlemen. Special attention was 
therefore paid to oratory, and oratory of a particular type — 
large, dignified, lofty, appealing to the sense of honour and 

1 Passing of the Great Reform Bill, J. R. Butler, p. 233. 



6 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

responsibility of a particular class. Such was the object of the 
Speech-days so much in vogue, not less than of the specialized 
study of the Classics as the model of language and taste. Par- 
liamentary eloquence was founded on the pure and lordly speech 
of the ancient poets and orators, who were freely quoted in the 
ordinary conversation of gentlemen ; Shakespeare was their only 
rival, but he was known with a thoroughness that would be 
rare to-day. Similarity of education combined with similarity 
of social position to produce a close society favourable to high 
spirit and intensity of life rather than to breadth of sympathy. 
For effective debate it is necessary that speakers and audience 
should share a common fund of experience and a common hinter- 
land of thought. 

Eton was a recruiting ground for Parliament, not 
only because of its peculiar education, but by reason of 
its personal connections. An ' Eton reputation ' was a 
long step towards a seat in the House. Grey might or 
might not have sat for Northumberland at twenty-two 
if he had never been at Eton, but it is in the highest 
degree unlikely that the friends and relations of the 
bourgeois Canning and Whitbread would have put those 
young gentlemen into the House so soon as they did, 
if Eton had not first proclaimed them as two of her 
chosen spirits. 

It is indeed easy to point out the shortcomings of 
an education which Grey himself thought bad. And 
certainly, when the two Houses of public-schoolmen 
and classical scholars were asked by an untimely Fate 
to deal with the economic and social problems of the 
Industrial Revolution during a twenty years' war, the 
result for the community was as disastrous as might 
have been expected. But during the greater part of 
the eighteenth century, itself a * classical ' period of 
stationary happiness for a considerable portion of the 
people of England, this close literary education had at 
least the merit of producing an aristocracy fit to set 
the fashion to other classes. Men of the world, but 
by no means ashamed of the things of the mind — • 



GENERAL GREY 7 

brought up to be proud of their knowledge of the 
Classics, Shakespeare, and Milton, and the histories of 
Greece, Rome, and Stuart England — the small group 
of families who governed the State with perhaps indif- 
ferent success, proved the best patrons of literature 
since the Athenian democracy. These aristocrats made 
the world, that doffed its hat to them, doff to the Muses 
also. For instance, while Grey was at Eton, the first 
volumes of Gibbon's History appeared ; at the high 
prices of that time they only sold 2,000 copies in the 
first year, but those copies, having been sold to the 
right kind of people, at once ensured to Gibbon an 
European reputation, and placed him, in the just regard 
of his contemporaries, by the side of Livy and Tacitus. 
Similarly, the great world of fashion and politics imposed 
on England the worship of Shakespeare ; it is due to 
the patrons of Garrick and Dr. Johnson that we still 
call the Elizabethan age, * the age of Shakespeare,' as 
if letters were three parts of life. It was in this limited 
but truly civilised state of society and intellect, now 
very barely imaginable to us, that Grey was brought 
up, both at Eton and at home. 

While his son was at Eton, General Charles Grey 
was earning fame as one of the best of our Generals 
in the war of the American Revolution. In a night 
onslaught at Paoli, near Valley Forge, he achieved all 
the conditions of successful surprise, and beat up 
Wayne's quarters with the cold steel. Among other 
expedients, he had caused the men whose muskets were 
loaded to knock out the flints, so as to prevent any 
chance explosion, a device which gained for the victor 
of Paoli the honourable nickname of ' no-flint Grey.' 
During the nineteenth century a portrait of Benjamin 
Franklin looked down from over the chimney-piece of 
Howick library at the domestic felicity o^ the Whig 
statesmen descended from this fine Tory soldier. When 
the British troops occupied Philadelphia, the portrait 
had been taken out of Franklin's house as the only 



8 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

permissible spoils of war, implying indeed a compli- 
ment to the worldwide fame of the philosophic rebel. 
The plunderer was no less interesting a person than 
the unfortunate Major Andre, then General Grey's 
aide-de-camp, who presented the picture to his chief. 
In the twentieth century Albert Earl Grey, Governor- 
General of Canada, gave back the portrait to the 
American people, who presented him instead with an 
excellent copy that now hangs in the same place at 
Howick. 

In 1 78 1 Grey left Eton for Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge. The eighteenth century was not a time of 
profound learning or of intellectual ferment at either 
University. The dons, as described by Gibbon for 
Oxford, and by Wordsworth for Cambridge, seem 
scarcely to have been libelled in Rowlandson's carica- 
tures. They were little better than the other clerical 
sinecurists of that epoch, with some touch of eccen- 
tricity often added to distinguish the academician. On 
the walls of Trinity College there is a strange absence 
of portraits of great men of learning between Bentley 
and Porson. One must look before or after the sleepy 
century for true academic fame. Under such careless 
tutelage young men of family at least enjoyed them- 
selves, continuing the lazy, lively existence, far from 
purely philistine, which they had begun at Eton or at 
Westminster. 

Grey ^ consorted at Cambridge with his Eton 
friends, Lambton, of his own College, and the Johnian 

^ The Dictionary of National Biography incorrectly states that he 
was at King's, no doubt because he came so prominently from Eton. 
His real College is stated not only in a MS. by his son, but in Mr. Rouse 
Ball's monumental work. Trinity College Admissions, where we read, 
under the year 178 1 : — ' Grey, Charles, son of Charles Grey of Falladon 
(query Fallowdon), Northumberland. School, Eton (Mr. Davies). 
Age 17. Fellow-commoner, Nov. 12, 178 1. Tutors, Mr. Therond 
and Mr. Cranke. Matriculated 178 1, Did not graduate.' The 
Trinity registrar of that date was probably not the first, and certainly 
he was not the last, to boggle over the spelling of Fallodon. 




Charles Grey at the time he left Eton. 
From the picfitre by Roinizcy at Hoivick. 



CAMBRIDGE 9 

Whitbread. It may have been in their company that 
he first developed a leaning towards what we now call 
Liberal opinions, which were a novelty in his father's 
house. At any rate, when the test of the French 
Revolution came, ten years later, this Eton and Cam- 
bridge trio figured together in the list, once of reproach, 
now of honour, of the Society of ' Friends of the People,' 
and stood together in Parliament for the down-trodden 
liberties of Englishmen till the death of Lambton in 
1797 and of Whitbread in 18 15. The brewer married 
Grey's sister ; and Lambton, the landed magnate of 
County Durham, was the father of Grey's son-in-law 
and Cabinet colleague, the famous Lord Durham of the 
Canadian report. During their Cambridge period the 
three friends were painted by Romney, each seated 
with a book in his hand, as if the three pictures 
formed one set ; they were done for the Head Master 
of Eton as * leaving presents,' and hang in the 
Provost's Lodge with other fine portraits by Reynolds 
and Romney of the young men whom Eton delighted 
to honour.^ 

But it would be a mistake to imagine that these 
three scholars and future statesmen chose while at 
Cambridge * to scorn delights and live laborious days,* 
like Pitt at Pembroke a few years before. They 
were devoted friends of the Falstaff of the University, 
Thomas Adkin of Corpus, a Bachelor of Arts, a little 
older than themselves, whose strange life and ready 
humour have been rescued from oblivion by Gunning. 
In his quarters at the White Bear Inn, known in his 
day as ' Adkin College,' nearly opposite Trinity, he used 
to entertain Grey and his other friends with Attic revelry, 
where much true wit degenerated, as night wore on, 
into Bacchanalian riot. 



^ For reproductions see Mr. Lionel Cust's Eton Portraits. The 
reproduction opposite is from the replica at Howick, where it forms one 
of a set of Romneys representing the four sons of General Grey. 



lo LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Whenever the Proctors entered the Inn [writes Gunning] 
for the purpose of sending to their respective Colleges any under- 
graduates who might be found amongst so tumultuous an assem- 
blage, they were immediately informed by the waiter that the 
noise proceeded from a private room where Squire Adkin was 
giving a dinner to a few friends. Whether this was a sufficient 
answer to prevent the University officers entering the room, I 
am not able to say, as the experiment was never made ; but the 
waiters were always questioned as to there being any under- 
graduates in the party. They never failed to answer, they could 
not tell, but imagined there were none, as they had seen neither 
caps nor gowns, and that the gentlemen were all in boots and 
leather breeches. ^ 

The studies of Cambridge were in those days in 
somewhat too striking contrast to the rigorous classicism 
of Eton. The only letter of Grey's of this period that 
has survived, written in his second term at Trinity, 
says : 

You enquire how I like Cambridge. I answer, very much. 
My only objection to it is that I think the study too confined. 
If a man is not a mathematician he is nobody. Mathematicks 
and Philosophy supply the place of Classicks and all other studies ; 
though whatever mode is most agreeable to a young man he is 
at perfect liberty to pursue. 

After school and college came, in those days, the 
third part of a gentleman's education — the Grand Tour. 
Foreign travel was then taken, not as now in sips 
periodically administered once or twice a year, but in 
one deep draught in early youth. During most of the 
time between his departure from Trinity in 1784 and 
the beginning of his Parliamentary career in 1787, 
Grey was moving about through Southern France, 
Switzerland, and Italy, at first alone and later * in the j 
suite of Henry Duke of Cumberland.' One long letter I 
of his, that chance has preserved, gives us a glimpse of him, 

^ Gunning's Cambridge, i. 56-66 ; Broughton (Hobhouse), Recollec- 
tions, i. 92. 



THE GRAND TOUR ii 

like so many before and after, fascinated by Palladio's 
Theatre at Vicenza, astonished by the Roman amphi- 
theatre at Verona, depressed by the gloom of Mantua, 
and preferring the scenery of Lago Maggiore even to 
the shores of Lake Leman. In the larger cities he had 
the opportunity of seeing much of foreign society, for 
travelling Englishmen then enjoyed the hospitality not 
only of the French but of the Italian Courts and salons. 
He came away with a lifelong skill in the language and 
literature of Italy. The Grand Tour helped to develop 
in him that excellent habit of mind whereby he always 
regarded foreign countries, not as pawns in the diplo- 
matic game, but as places inhabited by human beings 
with rights and aspirations of their own. 

In July 1786, while still abroad, he was returned 
at a by-election for the County of Northumberland, and 
he first took his seat in the new session of January 1787. 
The scarcity of family papers prior to 1792 makes it 
impossible to analyse with certainty the motives of his 
early political attachments. The difficulty is the greater 
because these motives, before the issues raised by the 
French Revolution sobered him for life, were probably 
not a little personal, and as much connected with 
Brooks's Club, Devonshire House, and the company 
of Charles Fox and his friends, as with any principle 
in politics. It is indeed hard to discern any principle, 
least of all of a Liberal character, in the actions of 
Opposition during the years when they were denounc- 
ing Pitt's Free Trade and pacific policy' towards France, 
and plotting to climb back to power on the shoulders 
of the Prince Regent. Grey's father was, if anything, 
a supporter of Pitt, and the junior member for 
Northumberland had been returned at his first election 
with that delightful freedom from pledges and obliga- 
tions which county members then so often enjoyed. 
Even after he had been taking a leading part in oppo- 
sition for several months, Fox still denied to him the 



12 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

title of * party man.' ^ But it would appear that from 
the moment he arrived in London he had gravitated 
to the society of those who were working for Pitt's 
overthrow. And, indeed, for good company and good 
talk, no party was ever better worth joining than that 
of Fox, Burke, Sheridan, and the authors of the Rolliad 
when it was still swelling in size at every new edition. 
Grey had soon adopted all the quarrels of his allies 
with the light-hearted enthusiasm of two-and-twenty. 

The only account of Grey's choice of a party which 
has come down to us are the words which the famous 
Lady Holland, then Lady Webster, wrote at the end 
of 1793. They presumably represent some real tradi- 
tion on the subject, but it must be remembered that 
they were written seven years after the events related, 
and at a period when the writer was not yet in the 
heart of the Whig circle, and had at most but a slight 
acquaintance with Grey. The first sentence sounds 
absurd to those who know anything about the later 
Grey, but may well have been less untrue about his 
early youth : 

Grey is a man of violent temper and unbounded ambition. 
His connections were Ministerial, but on his return from abroad 
both parties entertained hopes of him. His uncle. Sir Harry 
[of Howick], is a rich, old, positive, singular man, leads a retired 
life, but was always eager upon politics, particularly against the 
Coalition — an infamous thing, by-the-bye. His father. Sir 
Charles Grey, is attached to Government as a military man, 
and is intimately connected with Colonel Barre and Lord Lans- 
down, who at that time supported the Ministry. Grey was 
elected whilst abroad, therefore not pledged to any particular 

^ ' Mr. Fox replied to what Mr. Pitt had said of Mr. Grey's being 
a party man, and declared that the hon. gentleman was not of that 
description, but he hoped by degrees he might become a party man ' 
{Hansard, xxvi. 1198, May 28, 1787). In a letter of 1782, at the 
age of 1 8, Grey had spoken with pleasure of the advent of the Rockingham 
ministry to power ; so he had not been, even at that early age, an adherent 
of George III and Lord North. 



PARLIAMENT 13 

party. The fashion was to be in Opposition ; the Prince of 
Wales belonged to it, and he then was not disliked ; all the 
beauty and wit of London were on that side, and the seduction 
of Devonshire House prevailed. Besides, Pitt's manner dis- 
pleased him on his first speech, whereas Fox was all conciliation 
and encouragement.^ 

In view of the future, it was lucky that Grey fell 
under the influence of Fox. But in 1787 there was 
little reason for a Reformer to prefer Opposition to 
Government. The Rockingham or Foxite Whigs had 
delivered the country from North and the ' King's 
Friends' in 1782, put an end to the personal govern- 
ment of the Crown, and taken the first step, in Burke's 
Economic Reform Bill, towards the purification of 
English politics. But they then proceeded to deprive 
themselves, by a series of amazing blunders, of the 
opportunity to do any more good. When Rockingham 
died, Fox and Shelburne quarrelled, from incompati- 
bility of temperament rather than on any public ground. 
To make good the loss of Shelburne's party. Fox entered 
into coalition with North. That easy-going nobleman, 
who had lost America rather than hurt George Ill's 
feelings, was still hated by that great majority of his 
fellow-countrymen who did not know by personal 
contact what a good-natured man he was. The coali- 
tion not only shocked the moral sense of the ordinary 
citizen, but alienated from the W^higs the one progres- 
sive element of that day, the Yorkshire Parliamentary 
Reformers led by Wyvill, who leaned for some years to 
come on the broken reed of Pitt's Liberal inclinations. 
The King, rising to his opportunity of revenge, tripped 
up the heels of his Ministers over their India Bill. Fox 
made mistake after mistake, and Pitt, the unerring tac- 
tician, soon established himself in the confidence of his 
countrymen, and began his long reign as Prime Minister. 

The King's personal rule was not restored, but 

The Journal of Elizabethy Lady Holland^ 1908, i. 100. 



14 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

George III unfortunately retained in practice a veto 
on all great Liberal measures — Parliamentary Reform, 
Catholic Emancipation, and Abolition of Slave Trade. 
That power of veto was largely due to the weakness 
of Pitt, whose worst fault was unwillingness to risk a 
fall in order to pass the measures which he knew to 
be right, and who, as his friend Wilberforce learned 
bitterly to lament, preferred to govern the country by 
' influence ' instead of by * principle.' ^ But at least he 
could govern. In the ten years between the war of i 
the American and the war of the French Revolution i 
the country rose, in prosperity and in prestige, from the j 
degradation to which George III had reduced it. The | 
wits of Brooks's jested about Pitt's youth. But in fact j 
he was prematurely old in spirit — cautious, dignified, j 
formidable, experienced, laborious, wise ; but with a j 
mind that, after a splendid springtime, too soon became 
closed to generous enthusiasms and new ideas, and j 
ceased to understand human nature save as it is known 1 
to a shrewd and cynical Government Whip. He was j 
still being twitted as ' the schoolboy ' when he had 
acquired all the characteristics of the schoolmaster. 
While Fox always retained the faults and merits of 
youth, Pitt early acquired those of old age. 

Pitt, in his studious years at Cambridge, had 
mastered the new doctrines of Adam Smith, and very 
shortly afterwards he was putting them into practice in 
his budgets. It is true that his early Free Trade work 
was soon undone by the war taxation imposed by 
himself and his successors, and his rapprochement with 
France by the Commercial Treaty was the prelude to 
a twenty years' war. But, shortlived as it proved to 
be, the Commercial Treaty of 1787 was, as Mr. Lecky 
says, * probably the most valuable result of the legis- 
lation of Pitt.' It was an admirable measure, both 

1 Private Papers of W. Wilberforce^ Unwin, 1897, pp. 72-4. A 
most remarkable passage. 



HIS MAIDEN SPEECH 15 

commercially and as a means of putting an end to the 
traditional antagonism of England and France. The 
arguments of Opposition were directed, not so much 
against the commercial principles involved, on which 
Brooks's had no very clearly defined ideas, as against 
the political issue of improved relations with France. 
In so far as this criticism was more than factious, it 
was out of date. The traditional Whig hostility to the 
despotic and persecuting House of Bourbon had come 
down from William III through Chatham to Fox and 
Grey. But in 1787 the character of the French Mon- 
archy, already staggering to its doom, was very different 
from what it had been in the time of the Dragonnades.^ 
On February 21, 1787, Grey rose to make his 
maiden speech against the Commercial Treaty. * French 
perfidy ' was his theme, and the young orator could not 
refrain from * Timeo Danaos.' But it was a fine speech, 
and on the strength of it the House of Commons, then 
at the highwater-mark of its oratorical and debating 
genius, accepted the tyro as one of its leading men. 

A new speaker [so Addington wrote to his father] presented 
himself to the House, and went through his first performance 
with an eclat which has not been equalled to my recollection. 
His name is Grey. He is not more than twenty-two years of 
age ; and he took his seat only in the present session. I do not 
go too far in declaring that in the advantage of figure, voice, 
elocution, and manner, he is not surpassed by any member of the 
House ; and I grieve to say that he was last night in the ranks of 
Opposition, from whence there is no chance of his being detached. 

Thus, by a brilliant piece of invective on the wrong 
side of a question that he did not understand, the young 
man from Northumberland at twenty-two years of age 

^ On the fall of the Bastille, July 1789, Foz declares that 'all my 
prepossessions against French connections for this country will be at 
an end, and most part of my European system of politics will be altered,' 
if France ceases to be an absolutist Power. But the revolution that 
at once made Fox friendly to France, ere long made Pitt hostile. 



1 6 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

became one of the most envied in that most enviable of 
all the aristocracies of history, the men and women who 
look out from the canvasses of Reynolds and Romney 
with a divine self-satisfaction, bred of unchallenged pos- 
session of all that was really best in a great civilisation, 
in the years when Rousseau was no more than a theory 
and Voltaire was still a fashion. 

It is clear from Addington's letter that not a little 
of Grey's first success as an orator ^ was due to his 
appearance, to his manner, and to the general effect of 
his delivery. He was a handsome man. In the middle 
period of Grey's life, no less a judge than Byron spoke 
of ' his patrician thoroughbred look that I dote on.' 
In his old age, the Reform Premier is the most graceful 
figure among his colleagues in ' H. B.'s ' lifelike car- 
toons. In early youth, though many thought him 
* supercilious,' he had, when he wished, the gift to 
please ; and before the domesticated period of his life 
began in 1794, he achieved successes such as fell to 
few in that world oi .jin-de-sihle gallantry. The men 
and women among whom he moved when he first came 
to London lacked both the virtues and the vices of the 
austere. They felt themselves above the censure of 
any class but their own, and they had not yet been 
frightened by the French Revolution or reclaimed 
by the Evangelical movement. But these days of 
unchartered freedom were already numbered. The 
change from the high society that Fox led to that of 
the generation which ostracised Byron, is an English 
version of the change from the Renaissance Courts of 
the early Cinquecento to the Italy of the Jesuit reaction. 

^ In a book of little value that belonged to Lord Macaulay occur 
the words, ' No member of either house of the British Parliament 
will be ranked amongst the orators of this country, whom Lord North 
did not see, or who did not see Lord North.' Macaulay has under- 
scored the words here printed in italics, and written on the margin 
' Lord North, poor man, was blind when Lord Grey came into 
Parliament.' 



CARLTON HOUSE 17 

Within a few weeks of his entry into the House 
of Commons, his social success and his prominence in 
the Whig world had won him the always fatal privilege 
of intimacy with George, Prince of Wales. It is diffi- 
cult to say whether the ladies or the statesmen who 
put their trust in that Prince fared the worst, though 
both ladies and statesmen courted their own discredit. 
In his youth he was the bane and disgrace of the Whigs, 
and in his old age of the Tories. And in each case the 
worst trouble arose from his conduct towards a wife. 

The original connection of the Prince of Wales with 
the Whigs was due in part to his lively and dissolute 
manners, which fitted in better with Fox's and Sheridan's 
ideas of good company than with those of Pitt. There 
was also the natural tendency of an Opposition in dis- 
grace at Court to fall back on the Heir Apparent ; Fox 
and the Prince of Wales both hated George III, and 
were hated by him. If and when the Prince of Wales 
became Regent or King, he could dismiss Pitt and call 
in Fox. Such action would probably create a Whig 
Parliamentary majority ; for, although the ' King's 
friends ' as such had disappeared from politics, it was 
calculated that some 185 members of the House of 
Commons were always ready to vote for any Govern- 
ment actually in power, if it was not peculiarly 
unpopular.^ This calculation underlies the political 
history of the whole period. 

So the Whigs shared the Carlton House revels, and 
championed the national payment of the Carlton House 
debts. This was bad, but there was worse to come. 
The Prince was passionately in love with Mrs. Fitz- 
herbert, a Roman Catholic lady, at that time a widow. 
She would not yield to his wishes unless he married 
her. But even marriage was open to two objections — 
first, that if the Prince married a Roman Catholic he 
was liable to forfeit the succession to the Crown ; and 

^ England under the Hanoverians, Grant Robertson, p. 324, note. 

c 



1 8 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

second, that by the Royal Marriage Act he could not 
until he was twenty-five contract a legal union without 
the King's consent. Fox, in a letter of December lo, 
1785, laid these considerations before the Prince, and 
urged him in the strongest terms ' not to think of 
marriage till you can marry legally. A mock marriage, 
for it can be no other, is neither honourable for any 
of the parties, nor, with respect to your Royal Highness, 
even safe.* 

To this the Prince replied, on the next day : 

Make yourself easy, my dear friend. Believe me the world 
will now soon be convinced that there not only is, but never 
was, any ground for these reports which of late have been so 
malevolently circulated. 

Four days later ^ he secretly married Mrs. Fitz- 
herbert. His arrangements for the marriage must have 
been far advanced when he wrote to his * dear friend ' to 
induce him to believe that no such step would be taken. 

As the King's consent had not been obtained, the 
union was not legal ; indeed, the Prince subsequently 
married another wife while Mrs. Fitzherbert was still 
alive. But since her Church recognised the ceremony 
as valid, Mrs. Fitzherbert chose to regard it as sufficient 
safeguard for her honour. Since the publication of the 
fact would endanger the Prince's succession to the 
Crown, she always observed a magnanimous silence. 
Her reticence and her sufferings atone for her mistake 
in consenting to a ceremony on terms so doubtful for 
herself and so dangerous for her husband. 

More than a year later, at the end of April, 1787, 
the Prince, supported by the Whigs, was trying to get 
the Carlton House debts paid off by the nation. While 
the question was at issue, the Tory member Rolle, the 
exasperated hero of the Rolliady raised in the House 
the rumour that the Prince was married to a Roman 

^ The marriage was on December 15, 1785, not, as has often 
been stated, on the 21st. See Wilkins, Mrs. Fitxherbert, i. 99. 



THE PRINCE'S MARRIAGE 19 

Catholic. Fox ' denied it in toto, in point of fact as 
well as law,' and stated that he had ' direct authority ' 
for the denial. It is not known whether his sole 
authority was the Prince's letter of December 11, 1785, 
or whether he had received later reassurances by word 
of mouth from the Prince. In any case Fox when he 
spoke believed that he was telling the truth. 

Never was man in such a predicament as Fox when 
he discovered that there had been a ceremony after all. 
If the truth were now made public the State would be 
convulsed and the Prince perhaps excluded from the 
succession. Meanwhile, Fox was responsible for the 
circulation of a false statement, closely affecting a lady's 
honour, for everyone knew that Mrs. Fitzherbert was 
now living with the Prince. 

What precisely occurred between the Prince and 
the Whig leaders during the next few days and weeks 
is still obscure. What concerns us here is Grey's state- 
ment about himself, written late in life. He declares 
that the Prince sent for him after Fox's denial, and 

in a long conversation which I had with him, in which he was 
dreadfully agitated, the object was to get me to say something 
in Parliament for the satisfaction of Mrs. Fitzherbert, which 
might take off the effect of Fox's declaration. I expressly told 
him how prejudicial a continuance of the discussion must be 
to him, and positively refused to do what he desired. He put 
an end to the conversation abruptly by saying, ' Well, if nobody 
else will, Sheridan must.' And the aged Earl Grey adds : ' He 
confessed it [the marriage] to me in the interview which I have 
mentioned.' ^ 

^ Fox, Memoirs, ii. 288-9, i^otes. See also Holland, Memoirs 
of Whig Party, ii. 139. When the story of this interview between 
Grey and the Prince was first alluded to in Moore's Life of Sheridan 
(1825), George IV, in talking to Croker, denied that he had seen Grey 
at all about the matter ; but in the same conversation he denied that 
he had married Mrs. Fitzherbert (^Croker Papers, i, 293, et seq.). So 
I fear that we must believe Grey, and that therefore Grey knew of the 
marriage in April 1787, prior to his denying it in the House of Commons 
m February 1789. 



20 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Fox and Coke of Norfolk quarrelled with the Prince, 
who had deceived them, and when the heir to the throne 
invited himself to visit Coke, at his famous Norfolk 
seat, the reply was : * Holkham is open to strangers on 
Tuesdays.' Unfortunately for their happiness and good 
fame, the Whig chiefs after about a year renewed 
personal and political relations with the Prince, at his 
eager solicitation.^ None of them, indeed, except 
Sheridan were ever again at ease in Carlton House. 
They now knew their man. As Grey wrote to Fox 
in later years, the Prince was * the worst anchoring 
ground in Europe.' Unfortunately, they were tempted 
to trust to that anchorage, when the madness of 
George III in the winter of 1788 opened out the pros- 
pect of a Regency. 

Never did Opposition appear in a worse light than 
during the Regency debates. The party that stood 
above all else for subordinating the authority of the 
Crown to that of the nation, proclaimed the doctrine 
that the Regency was vested in the Prince of Wales 
as of right, whatever Parliament might do. This 
mistake enabled Pitt to ' unwhig ' Fox, and gained for 
the Premier the support of democratic Reformers like 
W}^ill and Cartwright ; and on the same side were the 
Royalist, the Protestant, and the moral feelings of the 
nation. Pity for the afflicted King, and detestation of his 
dissolute son, were enhanced by renewed rumours that 
the latter was after all secretly married to a Papist. 

The tone of the Opposition was as bad as its case. 
Burke's \nolence on behalf of the Prince was shocking, 
and already on both sides of the House men whispered 
that his noble mind was becoming unhinged. The 
morale of the Opposition leaders was not improved by 
the prospects of office approaching daily nearer as their 
unpopularity deepened. Georgiana, Duchess of Devon- 
shire, the accomplished and beautiful woman who kept 

^ Coke of Norfolk, chapter xv. 



THE REGENCY QUESTION 21 

the greatest of Whig houses open for the party chiefs, 
has left in her private diary a day-to-day account of 
the quarrelling that went on among her friends : ^ 

1788. Nov. 23. I saw Grey and Sheridan. Sheridan 
might certainly be Chancellor of the Exchequer if he chuses, 
but prefers reaching it by degrees and when he has prov'd his 
capability to y^ public. He argued with Grey, who would only 
accept the Chancellor of the Exchequer or Secretary of War. 
Grey says he will give way to Ld. John [Cavendish], Charles 
Fox, or Sheridan — but not to those Norfolks, Wyndhams, and 
Pelhams. 

Grey was only twenty-four ; when he was an older and 
better man it was no longer his habit to stand out 
selfishly for high office. Yet even now the benign 
influence of Fox soon brought him to his bearings, for 
in the following January Fox wrote to the Duke of 
Portland that Grey ' would like ' the very much inferior 
post of Vice-President of the Board of Trade in their 
prospective Government.^ 

Pitt's measures for restricting the powers of the 
Regent were bitterly resented by Opposition, and it is 
arguable that they would have acted as improper limita- 
tions on the authority of the Regent's Cabinet. But it 
was not held that they would prevent him from chang- 
ing the Ministry, and in February 1789 Pitt was 
preparing to resume his practice at the bar. There 
still remained one desperate chance, that the marriage 
of the Prince with Mrs. Fitzherbert might yet be 
disclosed. On January 2 the Duchess of Devonshire 
noted in her diary : * A handbill was sent to Mrs. 
Fitzherbert, telling her that to-morrow 500 libels would 
be published declaring the Prince had forfeited his 
right to the Crown by marrying her. Sheridan called 
here at 2 in his way to the booksellers to suppress 

^ The diary is printed at the end of Mr. Sichel's Life of Sheridan, 
* Foz, Memoirs f iv, 284. 



22 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

it.' Meanwhile the indefatigable Rolle was perpetually 
bringing up the question in the House of Commons. 
Fox now knew that his own statement of two years 
before had been false, and he was not anxious either 
to repeat or to contradict it. After Rolle had in vain 
questioned him on January 19, he was perhaps glad to 
be too ill to attend the House for some weeks. He 
was absent on February 7, when Rolle raised in form 
the question of the Prince's rumoured marriage with 
a Papist. Sheridan and Grey both rose and denied the 
report ; Grey denied it twice in the same sitting, in 
even more explicit language than Sheridan ; and com- 
mitted the absent Fox to full adherence to his own 
former statement.^ 

Documents may yet be discovered to throw light 
on this obscure business. Till then I can only guess 
that the Whig chiefs had agreed among themselves that, 
since Fox had been deceived into making the initial 
misstatement, it was too late to go back upon it now. 
They probably salved their consciences by remembering 
that the ceremony had been no legal marriage — though 
Fox had denied it ' in point of fact as well as law.' 
But the chief consideration presumably was that the 
truth, if confessed at this stage, would cause a national 
convulsion and exclude the Prince from the Regency 
and the Throne. Whatever their motives. Fox con- 
sented to the deception by his silence, and Grey by 
his speech. A few weeks later, by an event closely 

^ Parliamentary History, xxvii. pp. 119 1-3. 

Mr. Grey ' reprobated the rumours alluded to, as false, libellous 
and calumniatory ' ; and again, when he rose the second time : ' He 
repeated his reprobation of those reports as false, libellous and calumnious. 
. . . He assured the Committee that it was due to the character of 
his right hon. friend [Mr. Fox] to declare, that no consideration of health, 
or any other circumstance, would have prevented his attendance in his 
place, if he had not, at that moment, been fully satisfied that what he 
asserted on a former occasion, was strictly true. Had the case been 
otherwise, his right hon, friend would have been present even at the 
risk of his life.' 



GREY AND MRS. FITZHERBERT 23 

resembling an act of retributive justice on the part of 
Providence, the King unexpectedly recovered, and it 
was he and the Tories, not the Prince and the Whigs, 
who were to plague the British Islands for the next 
twenty years. 

In all his middle and later life Grey was regarded, 
alike by friends and enemies, as a man of scrupulous 
honour and veracity. ' Grey is truth itself,' wrote Fox 
to a friend in 1800, when a question of fact was at 
issue. * Grey always at least tells the truth,' wrote the 
cynic Creevey. But all the meagre evidence that we 
have of Grey's early years confirms my belief that 
between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-five his 
character and principles were still unformed. It is 
impossible to imagine the Grey of 1800, of 18 12, of 
1827, or of 1834 intriguing for high office, deceiving 
the House of Commons, or being so much as accused 
of that * violent temper and unbounded ambition ' 
which Lady Webster ascribed to him in youth. Few 
young men, except Charles Fox himself, were more 
severely tempted by the dazzling qualities of the com- 
pany into which they were early introduced, and many 
statesmen of maturer age have tampered with the truth 
to avert a national convulsion. The evidence as to 
Grey's conduct and motives in this matter is insufficient 
and obscure. There may yet be some explanation 
which if discovered would exonerate him. But, as the 
evidence now stands, it appears that he floundered ; 
when the Prince sent for him and confessed the mar- 
riage, he was brought into deep waters before he had 
learnt to keep his feet. 

Grey was from first to last on terms of intimate 
friendship with Fox and on bad terms with Sheridan ; 
with Burke he does not appear to have had any close 
relation at all. The Whig aristocrats are accused of 
keeping down Burke on account of his humble origin. 
If they did so they were to blame, though they were 



24 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

only carrying out Burke's own view of the Whig party, 
which he declared was and ought to be an * aristocratic 
party,' in which the ' new men ' like himself ought to 
* support those aristocratic principles, and the aristo- 
cratic interests connected with them.' ^ But, in fact, 
the suspicion with which he was regarded in the party 
was due, at least in later years, rather to the violence 
and irresponsibility of his genius — qualities which were 
not, as in the case of Fox, redeemed by an irresistible 
charm. After all, Burke did eventually break up the 
Whig party ; he was admitted into its bosom at least 
enough for that. And even before the French Revo- 
lution, his habitual violence, as for instance in the 
Regency debates and the Warren Hastings trial, was 
the terror of his own side. Bad as was the line adopted 
by Fox over the Regency, Burke had proposed a course 
yet more preposterous, and was deeply hurt when his 
extravagant advice was rejected. ' Afterwards,' he com- 
plains, ' I was little consulted.' ^ 

Genius, even of the first order, unless it is a genius 
essentially political rather than imaginative or philo- 
sophical, has no claim as of right to control the destinies 
of a party. We may doubt whether, if Byron had 
survived. Grey would wisely have included him in the 
Reform Cabinet. At the safe distance of five genera- 
tions, Burke's imagination delights, elevates, and 
instructs us all. But it was of that one-sided kind 
that ruins those who trust it in action. As he grew 
older, it grew ever more splendid and ever more erratic. 
His imaginative conception of India deserves indeed all 
the gorgeous praise which has been bestowed on it ; 
but it was equalled by his total inability to grasp the 
character of Philip Francis, or the conditions under 
which Warren Hastings had been struggling to 
establish an Empire while serving a Company of 

1 Burke, Correspondence, 1844, iii. 388-9, January 1792, 
* Burke, Correspondence, iii, 88-101, his letter to Windham of 
January 24, 1789. Broughton (Hobhouse), Recollections, iii. 106. 



WARREN HASTINGS' TRIAL 25 

traders. Burke's vision of the French Revolution 
was an equally striking and disastrous combination of 
prophetic insight and sheer blindness. The majority 
of the House of Commons, on both sides, felt the 
insanity of his genius growing as they listened to him 
year by year, and were ever more repelled by it, until 
the time came round when, being themselves shaken 
out of their customary good sense by the cataclysm of 
Old France, they and all Europe with them began to 
respond to his frenzied outcries for vengeance and 
for war. 

In 1788 Grey had been associated with Burke, Fox, 
Sheridan, and the other managers of the ill-advised 
impeachment of Warren Hastings. The trial had only 
been going on for one of its seven years, when Fox 
and Grey already foresaw that Hastings would be 
acquitted, and desired to drop further proceedings. 
Pitt and the House of Commons, who had in the pre- 
vious year consented to begin the impeachment and 
had named the Opposition chiefs as managers, in April 
1789 passed a vote of censure on Burke for having 
called Warren Hastings the * murderer ' of Nuncomar. 
The whole course of the debate, and the refusal of 
the House to accompany the censure by any vote of 
encouragement or thanks, justified Fox in supposing 
that the impeachment was already thrown over by Pitt 
and his party, and that Hastings' acquittal was certain. 
Grey, writing to Allen in the year 1842, records that : 

Fox and myself and others of the Committee of Managers 
felt very strongly the situation in which we were placed, and the 
little probability of bringing the trial to a successful issue.^ 

On the evening after the Commons' censure of Burke, 
Fox did not explain clearly to the other managers that 
he wanted to stop the trial ; but he seems to have 

^ In 1794 we read, in the betting book at Brooks's, in Grey's 
handwriting : ' Gen. Fitzpatrick bets Mr. Grey lo guineas to i that 
Mr. Hastings is found guilty upon some part of the charges against him.' 



26 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

expected that they would meet to settle the question 
early next day before the proceedings began. 

The next morning [Grey continues] I went to Westminster 
Hall with Fox. On our way we of course talked the matter 
over, and the feeling of both remained as it had been the night 
before. On our arrival we found that the Managers had already 
been called over at the usual hour, and had proceeded to West- 
minster Hall. This of course decided the matter, though greatly 
to the disappointment both of Fox and myself, and we agreed 
to support Burke in the step he had taken. 

If Fox had got up a little earlier than * the usual hour * 
that morning, Warren Hastings might have been spared 
the torture, and England the scandal, of six more years' 
trial. Lord Holland has left it on record that ' some 
slackness on the part of Grey and others ' in the 
prosecution of Hastings was one of the causes that 
alienated Burke from the party and fostered in him the 
suspicion that he was being neglected. This is borne 
out by Grey's narrative, which also proves that Fox 
himself was one of the ' others ' who became tired 
of the endless impeachment of a man already justly 
acquitted at the bar of opinion.^ 

In the spring of 1791 Pitt was preparing armaments 
against Russia, to prevent her from acquiring the 
district of Ocksakow from the Turks. Pitt's action is 
defended by his biographer,^ because in Pitt's mind it 
formed part of a scheme to unite England with Prussia, 
and so to save Poland and the Baltic powers from 
Russian encroachment. But, unfortunately for the 
world, Prussia had far other views ; and our interfer- 
ence with Russia presented itself to the English people 
as a proposal for war, not on behalf of Poland, but on 
behalf of the Turk — * an anti-Crusade, for favouring 
barbarians and oppressing Christians,' as Burke called 

1 Holland, i. 9. Fox, Memoirs, ii. 355-9. 

2 Holland Rose, Pitt and the National Revival, chapters xxvi.-xxvii. 



RUSSIA AND TURKEY 27 

it in Gladstonian language. The Opposition for once 
was popular, since it resisted an adventure which 
interested but few people in our island. Grey took a 
leading part in the debates, and now acquired his 
profound hostility to the Turkish dominion in Europe^ 
which served Greece well in 1830.^ From this time 
forward till the end of his life Grey stands also as 
a firm advocate of peace. Of the eight resolutions 
that he moved on April 12, 1791, the first was : ' That 
it is at all times, and particularly under the present 
circumstances, the interest of this country to preserve 
peace.' He declared that to fight about Ocksakow was 
an abuse of the theory of the ' Balance of Power.' 

Now that France has become no longer formidable, a rival 
is discovered in a corner of Europe. We are now to contend 
for forts on the Black Sea, as if we were fighting for our hearths 
and altars. This is a source of affliction to the peasant, and 
those who propose to lay new burdens on him for that purpose 
add insult to oppression. 

The arguments are almost precisely those of John 
Bright in opposing the Crimean War, which is in turn 
defended on much the same grounds as Pitt's proposed 
interference about Ocksakow. In this speech of Grey's 
we seem to see the guiding principles of his life be- 
ginning to emerge out of the chaotic ambitions and 
partisanships of his early years. 

1 See pp. 227-230, below. 



CHAPTER II 

THE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE 

The trumpet of Liberty sounds through the world, 

And the Universe starts at the sound ; 
Her standard Philosophy's hand has unfurled, 

And the nations are thronging around. 

Chorus : Fall, tyrants ! fall ! fall ! fall ! 
These are the days of liberty ! 
Fall, tyrants, fall ! 

Proud castles of despotism, dungeons and cells. 

The tempest shall sweep you away. 
From the east to the west the dread hurricane swells. 

And the tyrants are filled with dismay. 

Poor vassals who crawl by the Vistula's stream. 

Hear ! hear the glad call and obey ! 
Rise, nations ! who worship the sun and the beams, 

And drive your Pizarros away. 

Shall Britons the chorus of Liberty hear 

With a cold and insensible mind ? 
No — the triumphs of freedom each Briton shall hear. 

And contend for the rights of mankind. 

{Written by Mr. John Taylor of Norwich, and first sung at the famous 
Whig banquet at Holkham given by Coke of Norfolk to celebrate the 
centenary of the English Revolution, Nov. 5, 1788,) 

During the years immediately preceding the French 
Revolution, Pitt's enemies are too often found standing 
for no principle higher than factious opposition. But 
' the times that try men's souls ' were now to prove 
that the Whig party was still the seed-bed of principles 

28 



POLITICS OF THE NEW ERA 29 

that contained the future ; while the forces on which 
Pitt depended for power had, when brought to the 
test, no thought or help for the new era, struggling 
to be born, except dull resistance to all change. As 
soon as the French Revolution and the democratic 
movement that answered to it in this island had made 
the issues real, the Tory party was found to be solid 
in favour of repressive measures and against Parlia- 
mentary Reform. The Whigs were divided, but owing 
mainly to Fox, and not a little to Grey, the nucleus of 
the party was secured for the cause of progress. It 
was Portland and the Burkite Whigs who seceded and 
merged their identity in the Tory ranks ; while the fifty 
M.P.'s and half-dozen peers who stood, disarmed and 
apparently helpless, beneath Fox's tattered banner, were 
constituting the party destined to reform England and 
govern her during the best half of the coming century. 
Their action, though it appeared to many then, and 
appears to some now, as unpatriotic and seditious, laid 
down the lines of modern politics in our island, and pro- 
vided a Parliamentary channel through which the demo- 
cratic ferment going on underground could in the end rise 
to the surface without a convulsion fatal to the common- 
wealth. The story of the anti- Jacobin and democratic 
movements of the 'nineties, and the position of the 
Foxite Whigs in relation to the two, is of greater interest 
than any part of our later political history until the 
Reform Bill itself. In the last decade of the eighteenth 
century, the times, if tragic, were great, and the leaders 
on each side, though far from impeccable, had the 
genius and the manhood to play great parts in the 
great manner. 

Why was it that half the Whigs, in spite of the 
* aristocratic ' character of their party, stood for liberty 
and enfranchisement when the rest of the upper classes 
were seized by a reactionary panic ? There was a soul 
in the Whig party that Carlton House could degrade 
but could not kill ; it was alive even during the winter 



30 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

of the Regency debates. That soul was an idealised and 
traditional love of liberty. Coleridge was surprised that 
so aristocratic a lady as Georgiana, Duchess of Devon- 
shire, should write verses to celebrate William Tell's 
defiance of the tyrant. 

O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure ! 
Whence learn'd you that heroic measure ? 

So the poet asked. The true answer would have been 
that the Duchess was bred in the Whig tradition, which 
fostered an ideal passion for the overthrow of tyrants. 

The tradition of the party started from the solid 
achievement of the destruction of Stuart despotism. 
This, to the Whigs, was the central event of history. 
They seem to have regarded Hampden as the first 
Whig, and Milton as the party laureate. Cromwell 
was still ' a fiend hid in a cloud ' : the deed for which 
they were constrained to condemn him was yet his dark 
title to glory. He had * ga'ed Kings to ken they had 
a crick in their neck.' Whig tradition, so confident 
on other subjects, never quite knew what to make of 
Oliver. It was a relief to turn to the Revolution of 
1688, and to celebrate that. 

During the long, corrupting domination of the 
party in the days of Walpole and his successors, the 
Whig soul nearly died of fatness. But it was purified 
and revived in the uphill battle against George III, by 
the moral and intellectual splendour of Burke, and by 
sympathy with the American Revolution. Whiggism 
began to take on a less insular form, partly from the 
act of looking across the Atlantic, partly under the 
influence of the cosmopolitan * Philosophy ' of that era. 
Yet it always remained an unique British product. Its 
religious toleration and dislike of ' priestcraft ' is Locke's 
or Priestley's, not Voltaire's. Vague modern hopes of 
liberty for all mankind blend with a hearty English 
pride in ourselves, as the pioneers who had long ago 
hewn out the path still to be traversed by less favoured 



THE WHIGS AND REFORM 31 

nations. When, in November 1788, the centenary of 
the British Revolution was celebrated by the party 
whose chief asset was that somewhat too immortal 
memory, the younger Whigs were generously stirred 
by the prologue to the French Revolution then enacting 
across the Channel. In accepting the invitation to the 
Centenary banquet at Holkham, Windham writes to 
Coke, ' a festival to celebrate the Revolution is a proper 
reception for a person just come from France.' ^ 

It was at this banquet that the song, ' Fall, tyrants, 
fall ! ' was first sung.'^ The words, with their pathetic 
faith in the near future of mankind, perpetuate that 
fleeting hour of exaltation, when the traditions of the 
Whig party and the aspirations of the age of enlighten- 
ment seemed about to be realised together, first in 
France and then over all the world. Such were the 
ideas, or rather the ideals, which prepared the minds 
of Fox and Grey to sympathise with the French Revo- 
lution, to demand civic rights for Dissenters and Roman 
Catholics, to protect free speech and free association, 
and to support the movement for Parliamentary Reform 
even when it assumed the novel shape of a claim put 
forward by the working men. 

The agitation for Parliamentary Reform in the last 
quarter of the eighteenth century falls into three periods, 
under the leadership of three distinct classes. First, 
there is the movement of the Yorkshire Freeholders, 
patronised by half the Whig party, which culminated 
in_ Pitt's Reform Bill of 1785 and declined after its 
rejection. Secondly, there is the movement led by the 
philosophic Dissenters, which we may call the * Bastille' 
movement ; it was crushed by the Birmingham riots of 
1 79 1. The third movement was that of the working 

1 Oct. 18, 1788. Coke of Norfolk, p. 217. Windham at this 
time was what he himself would afterwards have called ' a Jacobin.' 
« Printed at head of this chapter. 



32 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

men of industrial London and the provinces, inspired 
by Paine, organised by Hardy in 1792, and forcibly 
suppressed by Pitt in the next half-dozen years. Con- 
temporary with this last and most significant phase is 
the Parliamentary Whig movement led by Grey, pro- 
tected by Fox, and organised in the short-lived but 
important Society of the Friends of the People. 

The original Reform movement of the Yorkshire 
Freeholders had been Old English in its aims and 
methods. It was not cosmopolitan in its outlook ; nor 
was it ' democratic ' in the modern use of the word, 
for the economic changes of the Industrial Revolution 
had not then created the ' democracy ' that we know. 
It was an union under Whig aristocratic patronage of 
those old-fashioned ' freeholders,' the middle classes of 
town and country, who had beaten the Stuart Kings. 
They demanded Parliamentary Reform, not with a 
general view of elevating the lower class or of enriching 
the poor, but to attain good government for the nation 
as a whole. The movement had, in fact, been provoked 
by George III, and was intended to put an end to his 
personal rule exercised through the nominated and 
bribed majority of the House of Commons. The object 
was to restore the old English constitution, corrupted 
by time and evil counsellors. 

It was almost as much a movement of occasion as 
of principle. When, therefore, the rule of the ' King's 
Friends ' came to an end, after 1782, and when the 
disasters and miseries of the American war were being 
repaired by the healing policy of Pitt as peace Minister, 
the agitation lost so much of its force that Pitt threw 
it over, after a half-hearted attempt at a Reform Bill 
in 1785. Wyvill and Major Cartwright, deeply dis- 
appointed by Pitt's desertion and by the collapse of their 
once powerful movement, survived to attach themselves 
to the more democratic aspirations of the coming 
epoch. 

The second era of the Reform movement covers 



THE DISSENTERS AND REFORM 32 

the years immediately preceding and following the fall 
of the Bastille. The leadership lies with the philo- 
sophic Dissenters, Price and Priestley, Pitt not only 
dropped Parliamentary Reform, but in 1787, and again 
in 1789, he opposed the abolition of the Test and 
Corporation Acts which debarred Dissenters and Roman 
Catholics from civil rights. Fox, on the other hand, 
warmly espoused the cause of religious freedom, and 
asserted the modern principle that ' religion is not a 
proper test for a political institution.' In these Test 
Act debates, which precede the French Revolution, we 
have the first clear indication that Fox was capable of 
founding modern Liberalism, and Pitt that extravagant 
Toryism that was killed by the Reform Bill. 

The leading Dissenters, now hopeless of relief from 
Pitt or from the existing House of Commons, began 
to agitate for Parliamentary Reform as a step necessary 
to their own civil enfranchisement. Dissenters and 
Parliamentary Reformers alike were alienated from Pitt 
and, in spite of the unsavoury memories of the Coalition 
and of the Regency debates, began with caution to draw 
towards Fox and the more liberal section of the Whigs. 
In this juncture of our affairs, the news from France 
began to affect the political imagination of Englishmen. 
France, not yet drenched with blood, had replaced a 
despotism by a constitutional monarchy, and was fram- 
ing a code of laws which put men of every creed on 
the same platform of civil rights. The more progres- 
sive members of the Whig party, including Fox and 
Grey, were at one with the philosophic Dissenters in 
acclaiming the dawn of world-wide political enfranchise- 
ment and religious equality, while Burke, who already 
heard the fall of civilisation in the falling stones of the 
Bastille, flung himself against Price and the Unitarian 
Reformers with all the heaviest weapons of his splendid 
armoury. 

Burke's * Reflections on the French Revolution ' (Nov. 
1790), whatever its author may have intended, appealed 



34 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

to passions only less cruel, and certainly more unpro- 
voked, than those which he justly execrated in the 
French mob. It was an angel's trumpet, but it roused 
the fiends. 

An unreasoned hatred of Dissenters, common in 
the higher orders of society and locally in the slum 
population, was stirred to fury as the result direct and 
indirect of the writings of Burke, who also denounced 
the Parliamentary Reformers and friends of the French 
Revolution. In the long battle between Reformers and 
anti-Reformers, that began with the Birmingham riots of 
1 79 1 and ended with the passing of Lord Grey's Reform 
Bill, the combatants drew much of their devotion and most 
of their cruelty from sectarian zeal — except in Scotland, 
where the fires of political hatred could be thrice heated 
without the bellows of religion. The more we study 
the local details of this forty years' war over which Grey 
spent his life so loftily presiding, the more does the 
sectarian aspect emerge. For example, the volumes in 
the British Museum of the correspondence of Reeves' 
' Loyal ' Association of 1792 reveal how largely the 
Reform movement in particular towns and villages was 
an eflFort of Dissenters, and how much the counteracting 
* loyalist ' movement was set on foot by churchmen and 
clergymen, in a panic of the old Dr. Sacheverel type, 
intensified by the news from France. In 1831 we find 
the same sectarian cleavage, except that then the Church 
clergy were deserted politically by their congregations, 
and the mob of Birmingham had gone round en masse 
to Reform. 

The ministers of a State Church have a natural 
bent and perhaps an obligation to emphasise the 
conservative side of life. But the degree to which 
the Church clergy of that era were conservative is 
not easily credible to-day, when so many clergymen 
endeavour to see through the eyes of their parishioners 
in working-class districts, which their predecessors 
contemptuously left to the care of dissenting preachers. 



THE BIRMINGHAM RIOTS 2S 

In the sleepy days of the eighteenth century, laymen 
complacently regarded the parson as the chartered 
tithe-eater, and he often regarded himself primarily 
as the possessor of a snug freehold. When the old 
order began to change, when news came over of Church 
spoliation in France, and men discussed in alehouses 
what the community got from the parsons in return 
for so many tithe-sheaves and tithe-pigs, the clergy 
took serious alarm, and, as frightened men will do, too 
often made a virtue of the most unchristian actions 
against their neighbours. In the earlier age of good- 
nature and enlightenment, Dr. Johnson's attitude to 
Dissenters reads as an amusing idiosyncrasy ; when 
we see the word ' Dissenter ' coming below on the page, 
we know we are in for sport. But there was nothing 
amusing in the treatment of Dissenters in town and 
country during the iron age ushered in by the Bir- 
mingham riots of July 1791. 

Priestley was a scientist of European reputation in 
an age when scientists were few. He was a man of 
blameless life and high public spirit. He was not a 
Republican, but he was a Dissenter — nay, a Unitarian 
— and he was now active in favour of Parliamentary 
Reform and Repeal of the Test Acts, and in public 
approval of the general course of the French Revolu- 
tion up to the summer of 1791. Therefore his house 
and scientific instruments were destroyed by the * Church 
and State ' mob of Birmingham, who had been incited 
against Nonconformists by sermons and pamphlets 
of the local clergy, and were personally encouraged 
on the night of riot by two J.P.'s. Dissenting chapels 
and the private houses of Dissenters as blameless and 
as unpolitical as the local historian William Hutton, 
were destroyed, with every appearance of connivance on 
the part of the Magistrates.^ 

^ The most intimate account''of the affair is in the Life of W. Button^ 
1816. 



36 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

This action was hailed with delight by many who 
should have known better. The men who were 
rallying to protect ' property ' meant only the property 
of Churchmen, and those who denounced ' the swinish 
multitude ' in the abstract, rejoiced in the mob-law 
of Birmingham. The Marquis of Buckingham wrote 
to his brother Lord Grenville, the Foreign Secretary : 
' I am not sorry for this excess, excessive as it has been *; 
and Lord Auckland, the British Ambassador at the 
Hague, wrote to him in a similar strain. Grenville 
himself expressed disapproval of the riots, but Pitt said 
nothing, and voted against Whitbread's motion for 
enquiry. Fox, with Grey and his Eton friends, Lambton 
and Whitbread, stood up in vain for justice. The 
motion for enquiry was lost by 189 votes to 46. In 
the course of the debate Grey said : 

It was not a political, but a religious mob, actuated by the 
most horrid and sanguinary spirit of bigotry and persecution. 
Many other houses belonging to persons known to entertain the 
same religious sentiments with Dr, Priestley were set on fire 
and destroyed amidst the acclamations of Church and King for 
ever ! Doivn with the Presbyterians ! and the French Revolu- 
tion appeared plainly to have been not the real cause but merely 
the pretext of these horrid devastations. 

Such was the way in which the most learned and 
respectable men in England were treated if they happened 
to be Dissenters and to advocate Parliamentary Reform. 
The riots took place more than a year before the fall 
of the French Monarchy and the September massacres, 
and a year and a half before the outbreak of the war 
between England and France, which has been pleaded as 
a sufficient excuse for the whole spirit and system of per- 
secution of Liberal opinions in this epoch. Indeed, 
more than six months after the Birmingham riots, Pitt 
declared in the House of Commons that we might 
' reasonably expect fifteen years of peace.' 

The spirit of religious and political bigotry was 



TOM PAINE 37 

now thoroughly aroused. The authorities, both local 
and central, smiled on outrage. More orthodox Dis- 
senters were scarcely less obnoxious than Unitarians, 
and not a few were forced to abandon their business 
and follow Priestley across the Atlantic. 

The second phase of the Reform Movement, as 
championed by the Dissenters in the palmy days of 
the fall of the Bastille, may be said to have been 
put down before the end of 1791. Early in the 
following year a more significant agitation was begun 
by a class of men who had never yet acted in politics 
on their own behalf — the working men in the great 
towns. 

The democratic movement in England — that is 
to say, the claim put forward by the common people 
themselves that they should choose their governors in 
order to improve their own conditions of life — owed 
its origin to the spectacle of the French Revolution and 
to the writings of Tom Paine. And the same causes 
that gave it birth proved in the first instance its 
undoing. The forcible suppression for so many years 
of the English movement was rendered possible by 
the course of the foreign revolution that aroused it, 
and by the impolitic and uncompromising logic of its 
first champion. 

Paine was an English Quaker by origin. But 
he had early settled in America, where his pamphlet 
* Common Sense ' had done much to persuade the 
colonists to cut the knot of their difficulties with England 
by declaring themselves an independent republic. Paine 
was again in England, and as soon as he read Burke's 
' Reflections on the French Revolution ' he sat down 
to write a reply. The First Part of the * Rights of Man ' 
appeared in February 1791. 

In answer to Burke's ultra-conservative doctrine, 
which tended to bind up the English constitution for 
ever by the pact of 1689, Paine stated the full democratic 



38 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

thesis : that government is derived from the people, can 
be altered at their will, and must be carried on for 
their benefit, through a system of popular repre- 
sentation. The pamphlet circulated by tens of 
thousands among classes who hitherto knew nothing 
of politics, save when at election time * the quality ' 
dispensed beer and money to make a mob for the 
hustings. The idea that politics was an affair of the 
common people as such, and a means by which they 
could alleviate their poverty, was new and strange. 
But the events in France had roused our ancestors to 
unwonted mental activity, and in 179 1-2 Burke and 
Paine were read and discussed with the simple eagerness 
natural to men plunged for the first time into political 
speculation. It was a fine and well-matched debate, 
in which the mind and character of Englishmen were 
expanding, certainly not all in one direction. But one 
of the two protagonists unworthily appealed to have 
his rival lynched : Burke declared that the proper way 
to reply to Paine was by ' criminal justice.' 

Government, however, declined, in spite of much 
shrill advice, to prosecute the First Part of the * Rights 
of Man,' where the author had not clearly drawn out 
all the inferences of his representative theory of govern- 
ment. But in the Second Part, published in February 
1792, Paine's logical sword came right out of the 
scabbard. He claimed that all the hereditary elements 
in the constitution, both Monarchy and House of Lords, 
ought to be abolished, and the country governed by 
its representatives alone, sitting either in one or two 
Chambers. Government would then be carried on 
for the benefit of the mass of the people. Pensions 
on the taxes now granted to the rich would be diverted, 
and used, together with a graduated income-tax, to 
give education to the poor, old age pensions, and 
maternity benefit. 

Far the greater number of Paine's * criminal ' pro- 
positions are accomplished facts of the present day. 



•THE RIGHTS OF MAN' 39 

The only part of the * Rights of Man ' that can possibly 
be called seditious lies in its Republicanism. Yet 
surely Major Cartwright put the true case, when he said 
at Home Tooke's trial that he * did not consider Paine's 
writings as a conspiracy to overthrow government, 
but as discussions on the subject of government.' 
Paine had not advised conspiracy or rebellion. The 
country would have sifted out for itself what it wanted 
in Paine's doctrine and rejected the rest, as indeed it 
has since done. But the controversy was cut short : 
the Government prosecuted and suppressed the ' Rights 
of Man,' and Paine, warned in time by his friend, 
the poet Blake, fled for his life to France, where he 
shortly got into trouble by denouncing the Terror and 
endeavouring to save the life of Louis XVI. 

Paine had most rashly identified his theory of 
representative government with a scheme of rigid 
Republicanism. For many years to come this confusion 
continued in the common mind. Even Francis Place, 
speaking of the workmen's clubs of that era, writes, 
* All the leading members of the London Correspond- 
ing Society were Republicans ; that is, they were friendly 
to a representative form of government.^ This confusion 
of terms seems ridiculous to us, who are long accustomed 
to representative government in the form of a constitu- 
tional monarchy. But we can understand how the con- 
fusion came about, if we examine what was then the 
practice of the constitution, and what was the theory 
of it held by Paine's enemies. The royal and aristo- 
cratic party in England spoke of the existing constitution 
as the ' direct contrary ' of democratic or representative. 
For example, in 1794, Pitt's attorney-general. Sir John 
Scott, better known by his later title of Lord Eldon, 
tried to get Thomas Hardy, the founder of the Corre- 
sponding Society, condemned to death for high treason 
on the ground that the object of the Corresponding 
Society was ' to form a representative government in 
this country ' — * a representative government, the direct 



40 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

contrary of the government which is established here.^ ^ The 
forms of our constitution have altered so little since then, 
that we fail to remember how completely its spirit and 
practice have changed, and hence we often misjudge 
the men and controversies of that time. 

In advising the English to abolish the form of 
monarchy, Paine made a ruinous mistake ; he was too 
much of an American, a theorist, a ' friend of the human 
race,' and altogether too little of an Englishman to see 
that his Republican logic would not apply to our island. 
But the error was not as gratuitous as it would be to-day. 
Monarchy in the reign of George III was very different 
from monarchy in the reign of George V. George III 
had lost us America, and was destined to prevent the 
reconciliation of Ireland. He stood in the way of the 
abolition of the slave trade, and of any chance of 
parliamentary reform. Grey was no Republican, but 
there was probably a good deal in common between 
what Grey said in private and what Paine said in public 
about the powers enjoyed by the inhabitant of Bucking- 
ham Palace — * the gentleman at the end of the Mall,* 
as he was called by the Whigs.^ 

The Whigs ultimately reduced the power of the 
Crown by the Reform Bill, and by instilling their 
doctrines into the youthful Queen Victoria. But in 
1792 they had no remedy. Those of them who would 
not follow Burke into the Tory camp found it impossible 
to dissociate themselves in the public mind from Tom 
Paine. For years he stuck to everything Liberal like 
a burr. Either you were for * the good old King,' or 
else you were set down as a rebel and a Painite. The 
man in the street, as he gazed through the shop windows 
at Gillray's cartoons, began to think of the Foxite 
Whigs as people in red caps of liberty intent on behead- 
ing George III and setting up a ragged Republic. 

* State Trials, xxiv. pp. 294-5. 
^ See Creevey, ed. 1903, i. 1 18-19, 



THE CORRESPONDING SOCIETY 41 

At this stage in our affairs, in the early months of 
1792, while the Second Part of the 'Rights of Man ' was 
appearing, and men were choosing their sides at the 
dictation of the most extravagant hopes and fears about 
the new era, two societies sprang into being, the out- 
come of that year's turmoil of all England thinking. 
Thomas Hardy, the shoemaker, founded the Corre- 
sponding Society, while Grey and his young Parliamentary 
allies founded the Friends of the People. Both societies 
were short-lived, but one of them was the origin of the 
future Radical, and the other of the Whig-Liberal party. 
They stood for two principles of progress familiar in 
English history — the people helping themselves, and a 
minority of the governing class helping the people. 

Thomas Hardy's Corresponding Society was the first 
political and educational club of working men. It 
supplied the natural leaders of that class with the oppor- 
tunity to emerge and lead, with the means of study and 
debate, and with an embryo organisation. There was 
then little Trade Union life except of a purely economic 
character ; no Co-operative Society life, and no higher 
education for the working class ; and therefore the 
Corresponding Society was as important in its moral 
and intellectual as in its political aspects. If it had 
not been crushed by the authorities, it would have 
done a still greater work and would early have stimu- 
lated other movements in working-class life, that began 
many years too late. Its political programme was 
Universal Suffrage and Annual Parliaments — that, and 
nothing more.^ Its members did, in fact, circulate 
Paine's works, and most of them were theoretically 
Republicans ; but it was Parliamentary Reform that 
they worked for as the practical object. 

Hardy and his friends were Londoners. London 
was then more Radical than the North, perhaps because 

1 Place Papers, Add. MSS., B.M., passim, e.g. 35142, ff. 236-7 ; 
27814, ff. 31-2. Wallas' Place, Veitch's Genesis of Parliamentary 
Reform t and P. A. Brown's French Revolution in English History, 191 8. 



42 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

the Westminster and Middlesex elections, held on a 
democratic franchise and enlivened by Wilkes and by 
Fox, had accustomed the inhabitants of the capital to 
watch real political contests, unknown in most towns 
before the Reform Bill. At this time the working 
men in Lancashire were still for * Church and State ' ; 
the year after the Birmingham riots the Manchester 
mob imitatively wrecked houses of Dissenters and 
bourgeois Reformers. But the Tom Paine movement, 
working through the Corresponding Society and the 
somewhat more middle-class Society for Constitutional 
Information, acted from London, Sheffield, and Norwich 
on the rest of England, and sowed broadcast the ideas 
that re-emerged in the days of Peterloo as the Radical 
creed of the working men in Lancashire and the indus- 
trial north. 

Such were the origins of the new Tory and of 
the Radical parties, between which Grey spent the 
rest of his life in steering a middle course. Under the 
impulse of the French Revolution, Burke had been able 
to indoctrinate the governing classes with the theory 
on which they acted for the next generation, namely, 
that the British Constitution was not only perfect, but 
unalterable ; and that everyone who advised his country- 
men to alter it was a proper subject for ' criminal 
justice.' Meanwhile Paine and Hardy had roused a 
portion of the working classes to demand Universal 
Suffrage, with the avowed purpose of improving the 
lot of the poor, and a more vague intention of some 
day establishing a Republic. In the long middle years 
of his life, Grey with his Whig party was stranded so 
precisely midway between this new Toryism and this 
new Radicalism, that he had small influence on the 
course of affiirs. But in 1792-7, and again in 1830-2, 
he was more nearly allied to the Radicals than to 
the Tories, and it was on those two occasions that he 
made history. 



*THE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE,' 1792 43 

The action from which the rest of Grey's life flows, 
and from which the Whig-Liberal party takes its origin, 
was the founding of the Friends of the People in April 
1792. It was this that broke up the old Whig party 
on domestic issues, a year before the war with France. 
There had been no split in 1791, when Burke renounced 
his friendship with Fox on the floor of the House, in 
a heated controversy on the merits of the French 
Revolution. At that time the majority of the Whig 
Members, preferring Fox to Burke personally, regarded 
the views of both on the French question as extravagant, 
and refused to quarrel among themselves about the 
internal affairs of a foreign country. The incident had 
left Burke more angry and more isolated than before.^ 
That year he left Brooks's Club, to which all sections 
of the party belonged. The split in the party itself 
did not come till twelve months later, when Grey 
founded the Friends of the People. It was that act 
of Grey's which drove the anti-Reform section under 
the Duke of Portland to concert measures with Pitt 
against their fellow Whigs. Fox was thereby com- 
pelled to choose whether in the future he would work 
only with the Reformers or only with the anti-Reformers 
of his party. He had hoped against hope to avoid 
making the choice, but he had no doubt how to choose, 
if choose he must. 

In this matter of the Friends of the People Grey 
did not follow Fox, but Fox followed Grey, to protect 
him from the consequences of an action of which Fox 
approved the purpose but disallowed the wisdom. 
This is the meaning of the passage in Lord Holland's 
* Memoirs,' where * the nephew of Fox and friend of 
Grey ' tells us that : 

Mr. Grey felt additional attachment to Mr. Fox and zeal 
for his party, from an apprehension, suggested by his warm, 
susceptible, and generous temper, that much of the obloquy cast 

1 Sir G. Elliotts Letters ^ ii. pp. 7-9, 102-3. 



44 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

on the party was founded on measures of which he had been 
the author, and from gratitude for the noble and unaffected 
disinterestedness and spirit with which Mr. Fox had vindicated 
his conduct and supported him against the aspersions even of 
some of his oldest adherents. 

If Fox had declined to throw his shield over the Friends 
of the People, they and not the Portland Whigs would 
have had to go. For Fox was the Whig party, with 
whomsoever he chose to abide. In siding with Reform 
he destroyed his own career and his good name in the 
world, but he prevented the Whigs from becoming 
bottle-holders to the Tories, and so enabled England, 
many years after his own death, to obtain Reform 
without Revolution. 

These transactions require to be followed in some 
detail. Considering the importance in our political history 
of the founding of the Friends of the People, which broke 
up the Old and originated the New Whigs, it is curious 
how little record we have of the first conception of the 
plan. Lord Lauderdale and Philip Francis were, with 
Grey, the moving spirits ; Grey put his name first on 
the list of the Associators ^ and acted as their Parlia- 
mentary spokesman. But Grey himself has told us 
little about it. In the very last years of his long life 
he repented of the action, on the ground that it had 
linked him with extremists, although he never repented 
of the principles of Parliamentary Reform, which alone 
the Society was founded to promote. In his last illness 
(1845) ^^ ^°^*^ ^i^ ^o^ ^^^^ 'one word from Mr. Fox 
would have kept me out of all the mess of the Friends 

^ The ' Association ' and ' Associators ' are the words used for the 
Society of Friends of the People and its members in the correspondence 
and speeches of the year 1792. It will be seen that the list of their 
names, about 150 in all, contains no one but ' gentlemen,' and that there 
were originally twenty-eight Members of Parliament, five of whom 
resigned in June. Their full proceedings can be read in the W^v'ill 
Papers, iii. Appendix, pp. 128-292; pp. 128-31 give the list, and 
pp. 169-71 the live who were expunged from the list on resignation. 



'THE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE,' 1792 45 

of the People, but he never spoke it.' ^ But when, 
still in the fulness of his powers, he was introducing 
the Reform Bill into the House of Lords as Prime 
Minister, in 1831, he had spoken to their lordships 
with pride of his connection with the Friends of the 
People as * not at all inconsistent ' with the great 
measure he was then proposing.^ 

We have two accounts of the inception of the 
Friends of the People prior to the official meeting 
at which it was constituted, on April 11. There is on 
the one hand the hostile tradition of Holland House 
that represents it as an after-dinner freak of irrespon- 
sible young aristocrats.^ On the other hand there is 
the friendly narrative of Thomas Hardy the shoemaker, 
who had founded the Corresponding Society a few 
months before ; to him the foundation of the Friends 
of the People seemed the generous act of young men of 
rank, ready to lend a hand to the democratic movement 
beginning in the lower classes of society. The view 
of Lord and Lady Holland, and the view of Thomas 
Hardy, may both have some element of truth, but, as 
is often the case, the more sympathetic account has 
the most real insight. The list of some hundred and 
fifty original Associators contains many honoured names 
of men who were much more than boon companions 
engaged in a foolish freak. 

The London Corresponding Society [wrote its founder, Hardy] 
were encouraged by such men [as the Friends of the People'] 

1 On the other hand, in June 1792, only three months after the 
foundation of the Society, Mr. Thomas Pelham wrote to Lady 
Webster : ' Fox told me that he had never been consulted about it, and 
that, on the contrary, the Associators seemed determined not to have any 
advice, and particularly not to have his. This I know to be true, for 
Lauderdale told me that they were determined not to consult Fox until 
they saw the probability of success, in order that he might not be 
involved if they failed ' {Lady Holland's Journal, 1. p. 15, note). 

2 Hansard, Oct. 7, 1831, p. 313. 

2 Holland, Memoirs, i. 13-14; and Lady Holland's Journal, i. loi. 



46 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

stepping forward in the same cause, professing to have the same 
object in view, which caused the people to flock in astonishing 
numbers to the Corresponding Society ; they began to be very 
sanguine in their hope of success by such a respectable number 
of members of the House of Commons coming voluntarily 
forward in that cause which we were embarked in. The society 
of Friends of the People were likewise encouraged to proceed 
by such large numbers of the industrious lower and middle classes 
of society which were associating in London and various parts 
of the country for a reform in Parliament/ 

Thus for a short while shoemaker Hardy's club of 
working men, each paying a penny a week, and Grey's 
association of gentlemen, each paying two and a half 
guineas a year, grew and flourished by indirect mutual 
encouragement, though without any actual communi- 
cation. And later in the year there grew up, in various 
cities of Great Britain, other democratic societies, 
answering in social and political character to the 
Corresponding Society rather than to Grey's associa- 
tion, but calling themselves * Friends of the People,' in 
embai rassing compliment to that highly respectable body. 
The furious outburst of rage, in Parliament and among 
the upper classes generally, against Grey's association, 
can only be accounted for by the example these much- 
abused gentlemen set to the lower orders. For, apart 
from the moral support which their mere existence as 
a society lent to the more democratic clubs, there was 
nothing that differentiated the Friends of the People 
from the Reform associations to which Pitt and the 
Whig chiefs had belonged without censure a dozen 
years before. Not only did the Friends of the People 
not circulate Paine's writings, but they expressly repu- 
diated his views. ^ Their two objects were ; 

First. — ^To restore the Freedom of Election, and a more 
equal Represention of the People in Parliament. 

1 Place Papers, Add. MSS., B.M., 27814, ff. 32-4. 

2 Wyvill, iii. Appendix, pp. 149-69. 



*THE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE/ 1792 47 

Secondly. — To secure to the People a more frequent exercise 
of their Right of Electing their Representatives. 

They never had, either officially or actually, any other 
object. The language of their Address to the People 
of Great Britain, adopted on April 26, was unexcep- 
tionable. After quoting as their predecessors in the 
movement ' Mr. Locke and Judge Blackstone, the late 
Earl of Chatham, the Duke of Richmond, Mr. Pitt, 
and Mr. Fox,' they proceed : 

The example and situation of another Kingdom [France] 
are held out to deter us from innovations of any kind. We 
say that the Reforms we have in view are not innovations. Our 
intention is not to change, but to restore ; not to displace, but 
to reinstate the Constitution upon its true principles and original 
ground. We deny the existence of any resemblance whatever 
between the cases of the two Kingdoms ; and we utterly disclaim 
the necessity of resorting to similar remedies. Our general 
object is to recover and preserve the true balance of the Con- 
stitution. These are the Principles of our Association. 

Resolved unanimously : 

That a motion be made in the House of Commons, at an 
early period in the next Session of Parliament, for introducing 
a Parliamentary Reform. 

Resolved unanimously : 

That Charles Grey, Esq., be requested to make, and the 
Hon. Thomas Erskine to second, the above motion. ^ 

Four days later (April 30, 1792) Grey rose in the 
House of Commons to give notice of the motion for a 
Reform of Parliament to be introduced for * the next 
session.' Since a whole year was to elapse before he 
brought in his motion, he only said a few words in 
thus giving notice, and those words were certainly not 
provocative, except to persons who had come there to 
be provoked. He quoted Mr. Pitt as his predecessor 
in Parliamentary Reform. ' It is of the utmost import- 
ance,' he said, ' that the House should enjoy the good 

1 Wyvill, iii. Appendix, pp. 129, 139-44. 



48 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

opinion of the public and possess their confidence as a 
true representation of the people.' ' The loss of that 
character might produce all the miseries of civil commo- 
tion.' If there were those who wished to excite such 
commotion, he disclaimed all connection with them, 
and believed that ' the evils threatening the constitution 
can only be removed by a timely and temperate Reform.' 

It was then that Pitt first appeared in the full 
character of alarmist. As soon as Grey sat down, the 
Prime Minister was on his feet, talking of * anarchy 
and confusion worse, if possible, than despotism itself.* 
Reform in Parliament might be well enough if everyone 
agreed to it, ' but I confess I am afraid, at this moment, 
that if agreed on by this House the security of all the 
blessings we enjoy will be shaken to the foundation.' 
Then he turned on the Friends of the People : * I have 
seen with concern that the gentlemen of whom I speak 
who are Members of this House are connected with 
others who profess not Reform only but direct hostility 
to the very form of government. This affords suspicion 
that the motion for a Reform is nothing more than the 
preliminary to the overthrow of the whole system of 
government.' 

There was yet no question of an approaching war 
with France ; it was not alluded to as a remote possi- 
bility, and Pitt had two months before declared his 
expectation of fifteen years' peace. In accusing Grey 
of the intention to * overthrow the whole system of 
government,' because he made a proposal for Parlia- 
mentary Reform in the same spirit that he himself 
had made it seven years before, Pitt was acting as 
* factiously ' in his own party interest as ever Fox had 
done, and with a want of generosity that Fox would 
never have displayed. 

The moment that Pitt sat down Fox leapt up to 
defend Grey, and the split in the Whig party had begun. 
In the following month of May the divisions among the 
Whigs were further increased by a Royal Proclamation 



ALARMIST PROCLAMATION, MAY 1792 49 

drawn up by Pitt against ' seditious writings,' in terms 
so indefinite that they might seem to apply either to 
Tom Paine or to the Friends of the People or to both; ^ 
all sections of Reformers were confounded together and 
held up to public infamy. * You have seen the Procla- 
mation, of course,' wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury 
to Lord Auckland ; ' the prevailing opinion about it at 
present is that it seems to admit more disposition in 
the country to tumult than exists in fact.' To this 
alarmist Proclamation Pitt invited the Duke of Portland, 
as Head of the Opposition, to lend his countenance and 
support. The Duke was the titular head of the party 
that had hitherto been led by Fox. He at once 
acquainted the latter with Pitt's communication, but 
Fox ' said he saw no danger to warrant any unusual 
measure, and declined taking any part in support of 
what is proposed, in Parliament or elsewhere.' A 
meeting of Opposition Members was therefore held 
without Fox ^ at the Duke of Portland's mansion, 
Burlington House, which became for the rest of the 
year the stately scene of an historic tragedy — a great 
party in dissolution. When the Duke of Bedford came 
to this meeting he looked round for Mr. Fox. On being 
informed he ' was not likely to come,' he drily observed, 
' Then I am sure I have nothing to do here,' and left 
the room. So the house of Russell once more chose 
the side of freedom and popular rights in a new age 
and on new issues. When the Duke took up his hat 
and stalked out of Burlington House, he began a new 
roll of honour for his family, though well-nigh forty 
years were to pass before the famous night when his 
nephew read the list of doomed boroughs, from the 
bench where Pitt had once sat supreme. 

1 Add. MSS., B.M., 35154, ff. 29-31. 

^Elliot, ii. 30; Holland, Memoirs, i. 15-16. According io Malmes- 
bury (ii. 424), Fox ' was present, but declared against ' the Proclamation. 
There may have been two Burlington House meetings on the Proclama- 
tion — one with and one without Fox. 



50 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Those who remained in the room under Portland's 
chairmanship took the draft of the Government's 
Proclamation against ' seditious writings,' and at Sir 
Gilbert Elliot's suggestion made a number of altera- 
tions in it afterwards accepted by Pitt. Although the 
Portland Whigs did not take office for two more years, 
they had now practically joined the Ministerial party. 
They were well contented with their work. 

You will perceive [wrote Sir Gilbert Elliot] that there is a 
schism in the party. I flatter myself I am in much the most 
numerous, as well as respectable, side. . . . What has passed on 
the subject of the Association [Friends of the People] and the 
Proclamation has obtained the greatest possible credit with the 
country and the House for the Portland part of our party, and 
will go further than anything that could have happened to 
reconcile both King and people to that branch of us. 

He speaks of the other side as * Grey and his party ' ; 
' Fox,' he says, * is in a difficult and uncomfortable 
position. He endeavours to trim, which is not natural 
to him and he does not do it well. He does not sign 
the Association on the one hand, but on the other he 
defends it.' 

The position thus correctly described by Elliot 
was further emphasised by a debate in both Houses 
on the Proclamation, when Grey boldly defended the 
Friends of the People against an angry House. In the 
Lords' debate, the event of the evening was a generous 
pronouncement in favour of Grey by the ablest man 
in the Chamber, the Marquis of Lansdowne, better 
known and more disliked in Whig annals under the 
name of Lord Shelburne. He had long been connected 
with the Grey family and had taken a fancy for young 
Charles Grey, who now helped to effisct a personal 
and political reconciliation between him and Fox.^ If 
it had taken place ten years before, history would 

* Holland, Memoirs, i. 43-5. Pari. Hist., xxix. p. 1526. 



GIBBON ON GREY'S MOTION 51 

have been very different. And so, at the end of May 
1792, the session was wound up. 

Grey thought all his life long, and his biographer 
may be allowed to think, that the fears to which Pitt 
so ably appealed were, as regards our island, wholly 
unfounded ; that our affairs had no analogy with 
those of France ; and that a moderate Reform of 
Parliament in the early 'nineties would have saved 
England from untold evils in the next forty years, 
and would have united her as one man against any 
possible foreign foe.^ But the fears that prevented this 
consummation, though they often had a large alloy 
of base self-interest, and of purposeful exaggeration, 
were with many as genuine and deep as fears can be. 
Their nature and force must be understood by the 
reader who seeks the springs of action in this terrible 
period of our history. The prevailing panic finds 
fair expression in the private correspondence of two men 
as shrewd and as little given to lose their balance as 
Gibbon and his friend Lord Sheffield. On May 30, 
1792, the historian, writing from Lausanne, comments 
on Grey's notice of motion for Parliamentary Reform : 

I shuddered at Grey's motion, disliked the half-support of 
Fox, admired the firmness of Pitt's declaration, and excused 
the usual intemperance of Burke. Surely such men as Grey, 
Sheridan, Erskine have talents for mischief. . . . Do not suifer 
yourselves to be lulled into a false security ; remember the proud 
fabric of the French Monarchy. Not four years ago it stood 
founded, as it might seem, on the rock of time, force and opinion, 
supported by the triple Aristocracy of the Church, the Nobility 
and the Parliaments. They are crumbled into dust ; they are 
vanished from the earth. If this tremendous warning has no 
effect on the men of property in England ; if it does not open 
every eye and raise every arm, you will deserve your fate. 

^ This view was held in later years by Pitt's ' good angel ' Wilber- 
force. See Private Papers of William Wilberjorce (1897), pp. 73-4, 
in his remarkable ' Sketch of Pitt.' 



52 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 
To this Lord Sheffield replies : 

I am fully convinced that if our Good Old Island had been 
drawn into the torrent of the new philosophy, Holland, Germany, 
Spain, etc., would have followed her, and we should have seen 
all Europe involved in the extravagances of irreligion, immorality, 
anarchy, and barbarism. . . . The devastation of the Species 
might be repaired, and at the end of a couple of centuries it is 
possible that Science, the fine Arts, and the politeness and gentle- 
ness of Society might again have been brought to the point at 
which they now are. Perhaps you may recollect that on the 
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire a greater number of 
centuries was necessary for restoration. I really believe there 
is nothing exaggerated in this speculation. 

Having these opinions, I highly approved and cordially 
promoted the conduct of Opposition at such a crisis. They 
have come to the aid of Government fairly and unreservedly, 
and many even zealously, particularly the Dukes of Portland, 
Devonshire, Lord Fitzwilliam, Guildford, Spencer, Egremont, 
Ashburnham, Stormont, Loughborough, Windham of Norfolk, 
Sir Gilbert Elliot, in short almost everybody except about a 
score who had committed themselves with Mr. Grey, many 
of whom are heartily sick of the business. The attempt at an 
Association has in truth had an excellent effect. It has alarmed, 
roused, and combined men in support of the constitution and 
good order. 

But ' the score who had committed themselves with 
Mr. Grey ' had the future with them if they could wait 
so long, and in the meanwhile might console them- 
selves with a monopoly of Charles Fox. 



CHAPTER III 

FOX, GREY, AND THE PARTY SPLIT LOYALISTS AND 

DEMOCRATS WAR JUNE I 792 TO FEBRUARY 1793 

' I am not a friend to Paine's doctrines, but I am not to be deterred 
by a name from acknowledging that I consider the rights of man as the 
foundation of every government, and those who stand against those 
rights as conspirators against the people.' — Grey in the House of 
Commons, December 13, 1792. 

Grey, who had posted north when the session ended, 
was not present on the scene of affairs during the re- 
newed party crisis of June and July, although the chief 
point at issue was the attitude that Fox would adopt 
towards him. It was characteristic, not indeed of the 
ambitious youth of four years back, but of the Grey we 
know so well in later life, thus to absent himself in 
his beloved Northumberland, while his fate was being 
decided in the south. If success had attended the efforts 
made in midsummer, 1792, to attach Fox to Grey's 
enemies, the Liberal elements in Parliament would 
have been annihilated. Early in July we read that 
* the Duke of Portland seems to consider the members 
of the Association as persons entirely separated from 
the party.' ^ It was Fox and his personal adherents 
who turned the tables, and decided that the Duke 
and his friends should be the outcasts from the Whig 
organisation. 

When Grey left for the north Fox was still hoping 
to unite all sections, though he had shown his own 

' Elliot^ ii, 56. 

53 



54 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

preference for the advanced party. But the Portland 
Whigs still hoped to win Fox for themselves. They 
were none of them lacking in personal devotion to him, 
least of all the Duke of Portland, who, though he was 
more reactionary in his public views than any Whig 
except Burke, had a strong feeling of party loyalty and 
regarded with horror any prospect of a breach with 
Fox. He eagerly caught at a suggestion thrown out 
by Pitt in June for a coalition ministry of all parties, 
excepting only the group led by Grey. Pitt, perhaps, 
would have liked best to get the Portland Whigs without 
Fox, as he finally got them in 1794, but he knew that 
it was useless at present to ask them to come in without 
him, and he suggested, sincerely it may well be, though 
Fox did not believe it, that his rival might sit beside 
him in the Cabinet. The negotiations never approached 
success, but they were important as a stage in the 
decomposition of the old Whig party. Portland 
would not take office without Fox or with Grey. Fox 
would not take office without Grey, or on anything 
except an equality with Pitt.^ 

The Portland Whigs hoped for the coalition of 
Fox and Pitt as a means of dividing Fox from Grey and 
so destroying the Friends of the People.^ But * on 
going over the matter,' as Lord Malmesbury records, 
' it became evident that the great obstacle would arise 
from Fox's being too much entangled with Grey, Lambton 
and that set of men who had lately separated themselves 
from the party.' 

It was no mere personal quarrel. If personalities 
had been the deciding factor, all who boasted the Whig 
name would have been delighted to serve together under 
Fox. The issues were neither petty nor selfish. The 
trouble was that while Fox was developing the creed of 
Liberalism, the Duke of Portland and his friends were 



^ Malmesbury, ii. 428, 431, 433. 

* Fox, Memoirs, iii. 22-3. Carlisle's letter. 



THE WHIG SPLIT, 1792 SS 

on principle more opposed to change than Pitt himself. 
Portland and Malmesbury agreed together that they 
could join no Government unless they had security about 
* Parliamentary Reform, the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 
the Repeal of the Test Act and the system to be observed 
relative to French politics. That on a// these Fox 
differed from us, and Pitt on several.' ^ These men, 
in fact, found even the Pitt of 1792 too Liberal for them, 
though he had given up Parliamentary Reform, had 
always been opposed to the repeal of the Test Act, and 
now offered them to compromise the Slave Trade 
question because the King ' did not like the measure.' ^ 
They had quarrelled with Grey and were regretfully 
breaking with Fox, because they conscientiously opposed 
any step in the direction of civil or religious liberty, and 
regarded the proposal to stop the Slave Trade with the 
same horror as the King himself. It was on these great 
domestic issues that the old Whig party broke up in 
the summer of 1792, when no one expected and no one 
except Burke desired a war between England and 
France. 

The abortive negotiations for a coalition were, in 
their most important aspect, an attempt to detach Fox 
from the progressive elements in the country, and to 
make him part of a National Conservative Bloc, which 
would, if he had joined it, have acquired a monopoly 
of both Houses of Parliament and of all recognised 
political institutions. Grey and his friends could not 
have maintained themselves in politics without him. 
But although this scheme had great attractions for the 
Portland Whigs, Pitt's followers were naturally less 
eager to share office with such formidable rivals, and 
regarded Fox as a political suicide who had already 

^ Malmesbury, ii. 427, 430; Fox, MemoirSy lii, 261-2. Elliot, ii. 
44, gives the same list of securities demanded by Portland, adding the 
' Act against Unitarians,' which Portland considered as sacred as Rotten 
Boroughs, Test Act, and Slave Trade. 

* Malmesbury, ii, 430. 



56 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

taken up with Reform. On June 27 Portland wrote 
to Fox : ^ 

Lord Loughborough says Pitt declared in the most explicit 
terms his readiness and willingness to act with you ; that no 
objection whatever arose from him or from the Closet [viz. the 
King] to the arrangement which he had professed to wish. [But] 
on consulting with some of his most considerable and best friends, 
[Pitt] had met with strong prejudices against you, and particu- 
larly for your conduct respecting the Proclamation, that he there- 
fore had not mentioned the subject in the Closet. And finding 
himself not pressed to form a new arrangement, he felt it most 
expedient and indeed incumbent upon him to proceed no further 
in the business. 

With that the negotiation virtually ended. We 
may surmise that, had the proposal been referred to a 
higher quarter, * the Closet ' would not improbably 
have closed itself against Fox, as on so many other 
occasions. Throughout July Pitt still declared him- 
self anxious for a coalition, but Fox was no longer in 
the mood to listen. On July 21 he wrote to Lord 
Portland : * I own I cannot bring myself to think that 
Pitt has ever meaned any thing but to make a division 
among us.' 

Meanwhile great events were taking place abroad. 
The ' metaphysical war,' as Lord Lansdowne called it, 
had begun between the despotic and the democratic 
idea, each now fatally armed with sword and gun. Both 
sides had provoked the conflict. The spoilers of Poland 
had first begun to threaten the rebellious French nation ; 
then the Girondin party had, with a light heart, taken 
up the challenge and plunged their country, already 
drifting to anarchy through intestine feuds, into a war 
to be conducted by a King who was on the enemy's 
side, with an army in a state of dissolution. Having 
led their country into this scrape the Girondins were 

^ Unpublished. 



BRUNSWICK'S MANIFESTO, 1792 57 

unable to deliver her, and had to make way, pitiably com- 
plaining, for men more forcible and more wicked. To 
save herself France went mad. Her first war measure 
was indeed sane enough — to overthrow the Monarchy 
which hampered her every movement of self-defence. 
This was done on August 10, to the accompaniment 
of the storming of the Tuileries and the slaughter of 
the Swiss Guard. Ere this the Austrian and Prussian 
armies had begun to move on Paris, followed by a train 
of French gentlemen whom noblesse obliged to join in 
the destruction of their country. At the end of July 
the Duke of Brunswick had issued his famous manifesto, 
announcing that he would raze the towns and massacre 
the people of France, if they continued to coerce their 
lawful monarch, or to resist his friends the invaders. 

The division of English opinion about our own affairs 
was now deepened by opposite sympathies for and 
against Brunswick. The Pitt ministry had resisted 
the public and private appeals which Burke had been 
making to them for a year past to lead a crusade against 
the French Revolution. Burke was disappointed, but 
he tells us that * every now and then I seemed to make 
an impression on them.' The Cabinet now hoped that 
Brunswick would do the work which they were unwill- 
ing themselves to undertake. Our Foreign Minister 
wrote : 

I fear more from this weather in retarding the Duke of 
Brunswick's operations than from any resistance he seems likely 
to meet with from Dumourier's troops, if we may judge of them 
by the late specimen of their conduct. 

Fox on the other hand regarded the defence of the 
French soil as the old issue of Marathon, Bannockburn, 
Morat, and his passion on the subject carried him yet 
further away from Portland and yet nearer to Grey. On 
September 3 he wrote to his nephew Lord Holland, 
to whom he always opened his heart : 

I do not think near so ill of the business of the loth of August 



58 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

as I did upon first hearing it. If the King and his Ministers 
were really determined not to act in concert with the Assembly, 
and still more if they secretly favoured the Invasion of Barbarians, 
it was necessary, at any rate, to begin by getting rid of him and 
them. However, it is impossible not to look with disgust at 
the bloody means which have been taken, even supposing the 
end to be good, and I cannot help fearing that we are not near 
the end of these trials and executions. There is a want of 
dignity and propriety in everything they do. And yet, with 
all their faults and all their nonsense, I do interest myself in 
their success in the greatest degree. 

While Fox was writing this letter, he was still ignorant 
that the Parisians, beside themselves from terror of 
Brunswick's near approach, were permitting a gang of 
filthy rascals to perpetrate the ' September massacres.* 
As soon as Fox heard of it he wrote to Holland : 

I had just made up my mind to the events of the loth of 
August, when the horrid accounts of the 2nd of this month 
arrived, and I really consider the horrors of that day and night 
as the most heart-breaking event that ever happened to those 
who, like me, are fundamentally and unalterably attached to the 
true cause. There is not, in my opinion, a shadow of excuse 
for this horrid massacre, nor even the possibility of extenuating 
it in the smallest degree. 

The September massacres were indeed one of the worst 
blows that ever befell the cause of progress and freedom 
in our island. They did for the English reaction 
what the Massacre of St. Bartholomew and the Revo- 
cation of the Edict of Nantes had done for English 
Protestantism. What a * Jesuit ' had seemed once, a 
* Jacobin ' seemed now. And every Reformer was a 
' Jacobin,' morally guilty of the September massacres. 
Pity and righteous horror hardened the hearts and 
darkened the understandings of men. It was in vain 
that Grey argued that the Russians and Prussians were 
committing the like atrocities in Poland, as mere lawless 
invaders without a shadow of excuse or right, and that 



PARIS AND POLAND 59 

the English Ministers would do nothing to stop them. 
Poland was far off and its names outlandish ; Paris 
was near and familiar, and many of those poor heads 
nodding on pikes had smiled in London drawing-rooms. 
* I have scarce a thought for Poland,' we read in a letter 
of the time, ' France is nearer and more interesting.' 
So Brunswick's retreat from before Valmy was regarded 
as a disaster, probably by the majority of Englishmen, 
certainly by nine well-dressed persons out of ten ; but 
the new working-men's clubs openly rejoiced at the 
French victory, and their rejoicing seemed proof sufficient 
of their criminal temper and seditious intent. Grey, 
too, spoke of Brunswick's retreat as ' matter of joy and 
exultation.' 

So, under evil auspices, the winter came on which 
decided for a generation the issue between the Reform- 
ing and Anti-reforming parties in England. It was the 
winter of two spontaneous popular movements in the 
country, one democratic and the other loyalist. The 
latter proved so much the stronger of the two, that the 
Radical movement was completely overwhelmed, and 
might after this winter have been safely left alone as a 
mere element of opinion working for the future. But 
the Government preferred to destroy it by statutory 
persecution, after it had been already conquered by 
popular disapproval and social boycott. The open con- 
test between the two propagandas, before the unnecessary 
coup-de-grdce was given by Government, took place in 
the last months of 1792, under the influence of the 
recent events in France. During this contest of opinion. 
Grey found himself angrily condemned by the respect- 
able for his sympathy with the working-men's clubs 
on the subject of Parliamentary Reform, but unable 
to work with those bodies on account of the Painite 
and Republican enthusiasm of so many of their members. 
His own letters of this year have not been preserved, 
but George Tierney's answer to one of them well 



6o LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

describes the difficult position of the Friends of the 
People. 

29M October 1792. 

Dear Grey, — ... As one of the Friends of the People, I must 
continue to be anxious for a Cabinet consultation somewhere. 
We do not seem to be aware of the very critical situation in which 
we stand. The late events in France are to us most important, 
and much may depend on the use we make of them. As far as 
I can see, they have made one party here desperate and the other 
drunk. Many are become wild Republicans who a few months 
back were moderate Reformers, and numbers who six weeks 
ago were contented with plain, old-fashioned Toryism, have 
now worked themselves up into such apprehensions for the fate 
of Royalty as to be incapable of distinguishing between Reform 
and treason, and to threaten death and destruction to all who 
differ from them. In this extravagant ferment of men's opinions 
our task becomes every day more difficult. The Leveller and 
the Reformer, the King and the Tyrant, seem in the new vocabu- 
laries of Courtiers and Patriots to be confounded and considered 
as synonymous, and I much fear we shall neither gain proselytes 
from amongst those who seem attached to the very defects 
of the Constitution, or those who seek to overturn it 
altogether. 

• The Friends of the People were not, however, wast- 
ing their time. A committee of the association had 
during the summer been drawing up a masterly Report 
on the State of Parliamentary Representation of Great 
Britain, which remained until 1832 the great magazine 
of facts and arguments for reformers of every shade ; 
it appears from a passage in this letter that Tierney was 
responsible for much of the work. It was the well- 
conceived intention of the Friends of the People, 
actually carried out in the spring of the next year, that 
this damning report should first be published, proving 
statistically and nominatim that British representation 
was a farce, and that then, after the public had digested 
it for a couple of months. Grey should bring in his 
Reform motion, of which he had given notice on the 



FOX'S MIDDLE POSITION 6i 

previous 30th of April.^ Such, however, was the rage 
in Parhamentary circles against Reform, and in parti- 
cular against the Friends of the People, that some of 
the members of that association were frightened by the 
talk of the town, and urged that Grey had best let his 
motion drop. But Grey, urged by Tierney and Erskine, 
stood firm to his purpose. The Reformers indeed felt 
that they were capturing the party, though losing the 
country. In the party their position was stronger than 
in the early summer, owing to the movement in their 
direction of Fox and his personal clientele. On Novem- 
ber 15, 1792, Tierney writes to Grey : 

I yesterday saw Lord Robert Spencer, who assured me that 
Fox was disposed to come forward as stoutly as we could desire 
on the subject of Parliamentary Reform, but that he was anxious 
to know what plan of reform we intended to propose before he 
shewed himself, I assured him that we had no specific plan 
yet drawn out, and that we should esteem it a very particular 
favour if Fox would give us his ideas, as I was convinced the 
majority of our Society were above all things anxious to act 
cordially with him. Lord Robert thought the best way of 
settling all this would be for you to meet Fox immediately, and 
I must add I look upon it to be absolutely necessary that you 
should do so. I am quite satisfied that, if Fox does not come 
forth speedily in his true natural colours and speak boldly what 
I am certain he thinks, he will be lost. 

Fox, indeed, was far from easy as to his own situa- 
tion, but his difficulties still appeared to him in the form 
of the problem how to keep Grey and Portland in the 
same party. This he discusses in a series of letters to 
his confidant Adair : 

I overheard you say to Sheridan [he writes on November 26J 
that there was much disposition on what is called the Aristo- 
cratic part of the Party to concede and conciliate. I must repeat 
that not one symptom of the kind has appeared to me. If any 
such disposition existed, I cannot help thinking that on the other 

^ See p. 47, above. 



62 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

side / should have weight enough to produce a correspondent 
disposition, I am sure that Lauderdale, Grey, and Sheridan are 
all manageable men, and the rascals of the Democratic party 
(for there are such on all sides) have not set their w^its to per- 
vert them, in the v^ay that those on the Aristocratic side have to 
pervert the Duke of Portland, Fitzwilliam, Windham, etc. 

Three days later Fox writes again to Adair : 

Though Parliamentary Reform was not, as Burke says, in 
the original contract, yet neither was opposition to it in that 
contract, and Grey had good reason to be surprised at so 
violent a schism arising from his undertaking what many of us 
had done before him. Indeed the taking of such an alarm on 
such a ground, and running to Pitt upon it, were very bad 
symptoms. 

While the Parliamentary Whigs were thus dividing 
themselves, against the next session, into two clear 
parties on the great issue, the country was deciding the 
fate of Reform by an unmistakable demonstration of 
opinion. In November and December 1792 — months 
of most unaccustomed political activity in whole classes — 
the popular reaction was organised by Reeves' ' Asso- 
ciation for the Preservation of Liberty and Property.' 
Hundreds of * loyal ' resolutions were carried by public 
bodies and public meetings, and sent up to Reeves. 
The half-dozen volumes ^ of letters received by his 
society in that strenuous winter is a record of much 
honest zeal and much selfish fear ; of devoted work in 
fair propaganda and odious delation against neighbours. 
In all villages and most towns the Democrats were 
effectually cowed. Shopkeepers who showed Demo- 
cratic sympathies were boycotted until they declared 
their repentance. Publicans who allowed Democratic 
societies to meet under their roof were given notice to 
turn them out or lose their licenses. In the provincial 
and London theatres, then the centre of a vigorous 

1 Add. MSS., B.M., 16919-16925. 



THE POPULAR REACTION 63 

popular life, both sides used to come to make their 
demonstrations, but ' God save the King ! ' easily- 
drowned * Millions, be free ! ' and the Democrats, 
who by no means represented the ' millions ' of whom 
they sang, generally went down fighting before the 
fists of the loyal-hearted pit and boxes. In the public 
holocausts on November 5, Tom Paine replaced his 
Popish predecessor, not only in the south, but * at most 
of the towns and considerable villages of Northumber- 
land and Durham.' ^ 

While this storm of opinion was rising and blowing 
its first great gale throughout the island, the Demo- 
cratic clubs in London showed more zeal than wisdom. 
They chose this November to send deputations 
to congratulate the Convention of France, and the 
ill-selected representatives of Hardy's Corresponding 
Society delighted the French legislators with the 
unpardonably foolish remark that ' it would not be 
extraordinary if in a much less space of time than can 
be imagined the French should send addresses of 
congratulation to a National Convention of England.' 
The French Jacobins, who knew as little of England 
as Burke did of their country, were thus encouraged 
in the belief that Britons were dying to throw off 
the yoke of tyranny. The success achieved by the 
Republican armies in this month in overrunning the 
Rhine country, Belgium and Savoy, had already made 
Jacobin France drunk with glory ; the idea of revolu- 
tionising all Europe was grateful at once to Gallic 
vanity and Democratic effervescence. On November 19 
the French Convention declared its resolve to * grant 
fraternity and assistance to all people who wish to 

^ Dropmore Papers, ii. 354-355. Life of Henry Hunt, i. 70-72. 
Conway's Paine, i. 370-371. Holcrojt (ii. 151) tells us how 'language 
the most outrageous was employed to make those who were in the least 
suspected declare their creed ; and if it was not entirely accommodating, 
the peaceable citizen, after being entrapped, was insulted and turned, or 
frequently kicked, out of tap-rooms, coffee-houses, and public places.' 



64 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

recover their liberty,' and though this decree was not 
aimed at England, and was little more serious than so 
many other pieces of Republican gasconade, it caused 
the utmost indignation in the now sensitive body of 
English Toryism. In many countries to which the 
French troops carried the tricolor, they were welcomed 
as deliverers by important classes of the community, 
and they never understood what a very different recep- 
tion they would have met with in England, where even 
the Corresponding Society voted that all its members 
should take arms against the French if they landed.^ 
The Jacobins were deceived, partly by their own con- 
ceit and ignorance, partly by the foolish conduct of the 
English Democrats in Paris in November 1792, partly 
by the Tory Press and Gillray's cartoons which repre- 
sented Fox and his adherents as Jacobins bent on 
beheading George III. Our alarmists' outcries about 
the ' seditious sentiments ' of the lower orders were 
taken by the French au -pied de la lettre. In October 
1793 a play was acted in Paris about the invasion of 
England. The plot was as follows : 

' Grey proposes to go and welcome the French, a 
Republic is proclaimed, the heads of the Prince of 
Wales and Pitt are cut off and paraded through the 
streets. George III shut up in a carriage, is drawn 
to Bedlam by Burke, Grenville, and Chesterfield. Fox 
and Sheridan in red caps insult him.' In England this 
Parisian revue was seriously cast in Grey's teeth.^ But 
the plot might have been, and probably was, culled 
from Gillray and the Tory Press, which from first to 
last did all they could to make the French believe that 
they would be welcomed in England by the chiefs of 
the Opposition and a large part of the community. 

Pitt helped to increase this misconception, when 
on December i, 1792, he issued a Proclamation to 

1 Add. MSS., B.M., 35143, fi. 60-61. 

* Alger, Englishmen in the French Revolution, 141-2. Life of Wil' 
berforce, ii. 427, 459. 



ALARMIST PROCLAMATION, 1792 6s 

call out the militia and summon Parliament a month 
sooner than was expected, on the alleged ground that 
' a spirit of tumult and disorder,' incited by seditious 
persons in league with foreigners, ' had lately shown 
itself in acts of riot and insurrection.' It was the 
old story of the wolf and the lamb, for the only 
mob violence that had taken place in connection 
with the new democracy had been perpetrated by the 
Royalist roughs of Birmingham and Manchester. 
Ministers, when challenged to say where the ' insur- 
rection ' had shown its head, replied that there had 
been a bread-riot at Perth, and that a mob had planted 
a tree of liberty at Dundee. Sir Gilbert Elliot, though 
he now supported Pitt, confessed to his wife that the 
Proclamation of December i was not justifiable, that ' no 
insurrection has taken place in England, which seems, 
I think, rather more quiet than usual,' while the Scotch 
* insurrections ' were ' ridiculous to those who live in 
Scotland and know the truth.' A few days before. 
Lord Grenville, Pitt's principal colleague, had con- 
fessed in a letter to his brother that the country was 
perfectly quiet, and that the stories of riot when investi- 
gated came to nothing.^ 

When, therefore. Fox heard of the Proclamation he 
was moved to an access of fury which probably affected 
his conduct during the important crisis of the next 
month. The hasty scrawl he sent off" to the Duke of 
Portland on jSrst hearing the news bears all the traces 
of being written by a man beside himself with rage 
against a mean but all-powerful enemy : 

My dear Lord, — I send you inclosed a note I have just 
received from Adam. If they mention danger of Insurrection, 
or rather (as they must do to legalise their proceedings) ^ of Rebel- 

^ Pari. Hist., XXX. 48. Elliot, ii. 80-1. Fox, Mem., iii. 28-9. 

^ Viz., to legalise calling out the militia and the summons of Parlia- 
ment without the legal length of notice. The Proclamation in fact 
mentioned not mere ' danger ' but actuality of insurrection. 



66 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

lion, surely the first measure all honest men ought to take is to 
impeach them for so wicked and detestable a falsehood. I fairly 
own that if they have done this I shall grow savage, and not think 
a French Lanterne too bad for them. Surely it is impossible if 
anything were impossible for such monsters, who for the purpose 
of weakening or destroying the honourable connection of the 
Whigs, would not scruple to run the risque of a Civil War. I 
cannot trust myself to write any more for I confess I am too 
much affected. 1 

Ten days after writing this note, and two before 
Parliament met, Fox dined at Burlington House with 
the Duke of Portland's friends ; the conversation 
revealed that he was more than ever divided from 
them, not only on these home affairs but on the ques- 
tion now arising of peace or war with France. When 
the Commons met on December 13, Fox appeared in 
close league with Grey's party, of which he is hence- 
forth the acknowledged head. The Liberal leader and 
his lieutenant denounced the fraud of Pitt's * insurrec- 
tion.' 2 * The behaviour of Fox rather afflicts than 
surprises me,' wrote Gibbon, when he heard the news ; 
' his inmost soul is deeply tinged with democracy.^ 

The breach in the party was at length complete, 
although the Duke of Portland himself had not the 
heart to proclaim what everyone knew, that ' the Whig 
connection ' was dissolved. When once he had gone 
over, the Duke made a very good Tory, and never 
came back again, as did some who were impatient with 
him this winter for his slowness in publicly repudiating 

* Unpublished* 

2 Grey said : ' If the conduct of any set of men was calculated to 
excite insurrection it was that of Ministers, who, by proclamations calum- 
niating whole descriptions of men as seditious, and announcing insurrec- 
tions that never existed, filled the minds of the people with false alarms, 
and taught every man to distrust if not hate his neighbour. The only 
instance like insurrection that had occurred, at Birmingham, and he was 
informed now at Manchester, were mobs on pretext of loyalty and order, 
directed solely against persons supposed inimical not to His Majesty but 
to his Ministers.' — Pari. Hist., xxx. 83. 



THE WHIG SPLIT COMPLETE 67 

Fox. These mercurial spirits, such as Windham and 
ElUot, found it no Ught task to get Portland to move. 
They complained that he would sit * not uttering one 
word, admitting all you say and sobbing grievously.' 
For hours together he would stare in front of him in 
a trance, while his followers lectured him on his duty. 
The operation might have been called * hoisting the 
Duke,' for whenever they had lifted him to the level 
of promising to make his announcement. Fox would call 
at Burlington House or write him an appealing letter, 
and back he would slip once more. The poor man 
dumbly felt that he was, as he had been called, * a good 
block to hang Whigs on,' and that Pitt had nothing 
to offer a nobleman of his eminence that could compen- 
sate him for the loss of Fox's friendship. But though 
the Duke would make no official statement of the party 
position, others were not so reticent, and at the New 
Year of 1793 the followers of Grey and Fox were 
amalgamated under Fox's leadership as the only Oppo- 
sition party. The Portland Whigs were henceforth 
unequivocal supporters of Pitt, in whose Cabinet 
Portland finally consented to take office in July I794.-'- 

It was indeed no longer possible to halt between 
two opinions, though truth were hid in the centre. 
Men alive must choose their parts, and leave posterity 
to be wiser — if it can. To the question of Reform or 
repression at home was added the question of foreign 
war. Fox and Grey were opposed to the war policy. 
They pleaded in the House that we should acknowledge 
the French Republic and send a Minister to Paris to 
treat with the de facto Government. They allowed 
that it would be necessary to protect Holland if the 
Dutch were attacked, but they complained when Pitt 
and Grenville threatened France before Holland herself 

1 Elliot, ii. 84-98. Maimesbury, ii. 440-78. Russell's Fox, ii. 
320-3. 



68 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL! 

had felt alarm or had asked for our protection. They 
thought that the opening of the Scheldt to navigation 
was an insufficient reason for England to go to war 
with France, when acts of spoliation more extensive and 
more wicked were being perpetrated in Poland without 
our challenge. 

When Poland [Grey told the House] was beginning to 
recover from the long calamities of anarchy, combined with 
oppression ; after she had established an hereditary and limited 
monarchy like our own, His Majesty's Ministers, with apparent 
indifference and unconcern, have seen her become the victim of 
the most unprovoked and unprincipled invasion. Then [con- 
tinued Grey] His Majesty's Ministers beheld with supine indif- 
ference or secret approbation the armies of other Powers [Prussia 
and Austria] in evident concert with the oppressor of Poland 
[Russia], advancing to the invasion and subjugation of France 
[and threatening its destruction in the Brunswick Manifesto], 
But no sooner, by an ever-memorable reverse of fortune, had 
France repulsed her invaders and carried her arms into their 
territory, than His Majesty's Ministers began to express alarms 
for the general security of Europe, which it appears to us might 
have been expressed with greater justice on the previous successes 
of her powerful adversaries. 

The statements of fact here contained are correct 
so far as they go. Both Jacobin France and the 
despotisms of Eastern Europe were out for plunder, 
each side intending to overset what England rightly 
valued — * the balance of power in Europe.' But in 
entering the Netherlands and threatening Holland, 
France was stepping on to ground which England has 
never been willing to see pass under the authority of 
any power that might threaten her island security. 
In 1 83 1 Grey, as Reform Premier, whose policy depended 
on maintaining good relations with Liberal France, was 
compelled to threaten her with war if she tampered with 
the real independence of Belgium. In 1793 England 
was certain in any case to choose her side according to 
her own political sympathies. And therefore, in the 



WAR WITH FRANCE, 1793 69 

existing anti- Jacobin temper of her governing and middle 
classes, it was certain that she would sooner or later 
join in the crusade against the French Republic. Inci- 
dentally, whether she wished it or not, she would then 
be fighting to rivet the chains of the military despotisms 
of the East on Poland, Italy, Hungary, and Germany. 
After great varieties of fortune, this was accomplished 
in 1 8 15, and the nineteenth century was spent by 
England in wishing it undone, in sympathising with 
all the causes and nationalities she had helped to over- 
throw, and in ever-increasing jealousy of the Teutonic 
and Slavonic powers which she had spent so many 
millions to inflate. But all this should not be laid at 
the single door of Pitt, as Grey was inclined to lay it. 
It was the fault of Burke and the Girondin and Jacobin 
military adventurers, of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, 
and, in a lesser degree, of the EngHsh people. The 
pohtical sympathies of the English in 1792-3 rendered 
war with France inevitable, because the French were 
then incapable of remaining at peace with a neighbour 
unsympathetic to their cause. In that hour of their 
dasmonic exaltation, he who was not with them was 
against them. France would not have retired out of 
Belgium or kept her hands off Holland, whatever Pitt 
had done, unless like the Corresponding Society he had 
sent messages of congratulation to the Convention. And 
if he had done that, the English would have removed 
him from being their governor. 

Fox and Grey themselves could have made nothing 
of the situation at Christmas 1792. Europe was already 
rushing down the inclined slope of its evil passions to 
the fate that befell it. The red star, not of Pitt, but of 
Burke, was in the ascendant. But the curious may be 
allowed to speculate what would have happened if, 
from 1789 onwards, England had adopted the sym- 
pathetic attitude of Fox and Grey towards the French 
Revolution. If England had interposed her veto against 
any attack on France by Prussia and Austria in the 



70 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

summer of 1792, would the French then have been 
saved from Jacobinism, the Terror, and the policy of 
military adventure that grew out of those domestic 
horrors ? If England had been her friend, would France 
have listened at all to English wishes, and could the 
two Liberal Powers of Western Europe have stood 
together for peace and liberty ? That was the ideal of 
Fox and Grey, but the English had been in no mood 
to try the experiment, and now in any case it was 
too late. 

All that Fox and Grey could now do was to record 
their protest against what they knew to be a tragedy, 
and less justly attributed to Pitt as a crime. But a 
tragedy it certainly was, and must have been, whatever 
course the war had run. If the allied armies had got 
to Paris in 1793, as might well have happened if they 
had acted in August with concert and vigour,^ Pitt, 
whatever his own fluctuating intentions towards France 
might have been, would have had no alternative but to 
allow the emigres to re-establish the ancien regime. The 
threats of Brunswick's manifesto would have become facts. 
We should have extinguished freedom on the Continent. 
Fox and Grey could not bring themselves to wish for this 
consummation, and who that loves either France or liberty 
shall blame them ? The conquest of England, which 
they dreaded most of all, was not a possibility in the 
early years of the war. The worst results, that must 
have followed on the complete success by either party, 
were happily avoided. England was never conquered, 
and France was only conquered after twenty years, when 
the social results of the Revolution had taken such 
root that Wellington and Blucher could not restore the 
complete ancien regime on French soil. 

What actually happened was bad enough. Europe 
was barbarised by twenty years of war ; and militarism 

1 Fortescue, British Army, 1906, iv. 1 16-18. Dropmore Papers, 
iii. pp. zxi-xxii, 484-5. 



WAR WITH FRANCE, 1793 71 

became the type and standard of the modern world. 
In 18 15 all Europe outside France was laid at the 
feet of the Teutonic and Slavonic military despotisms. 
In England herself the twenty years' war involved 
forty years' political reaction on the model of Burke's 
neo-Toryism. And it was during these years of war 
and reaction, when the poor were at a discount indeed, 
that our Industrial Revolution took place under the 
worst possible conditions. It was in time of war and 
repression that the millions in town and country acquired 
their new economic and social being. The physical 
and moral deterioration of the masses, in the early 
nineteenth century, was largely due to the war, both 
to its economic effects and to the political and social 
reaction in ideas that an anti-Jacobin war so unduly 
prolonged. 

If it was still possible at Christmas for onlookers to 
hope for peace, the execution of Louis XVI in January 
1793 dispelled the last illusions. The French did not 
want peace with England, or they would have listened 
to Deputy Paine's earnest appeal to them to spare the 
man from whose head the crown had fallen. They 
preferred the stormy eloquence of Danton : * The 
coalised kings threaten us ; we hurl at their feet, as gage 
of battle, the head of a king.' Brave words of a brave 
man ; but no less bloody than brave, they fell cold on 
the ears of Fox and Grey. To them the news of the 
King's execution came as a sentence fatal to their hopes 
for peace between France and England, and for liberty 
in either land. * An account is come that the King of 
France was executed on Monday morning,' wrote Grey 
to a friend. ' Bad as I am thought, I cannot express 
the horror I feel at this atrocity. War is certain — 
God grant we may not all lament the consequences of 
it.' The horror of the * French cannibals ' which had 
been generated in England by the September massacres 
was redoubled by the slaughter of the kindly King. 
On that royal theme every chord in the English nature 



72 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

vibrated with pity and indignation. In a few days 
war broke out between the two peoples, each bHnded 
by the frenzy of its own self-righteousness. 

Since the above was written another great war 
has been fought and won. It has been fought on 
behalf of the principles of Fox and Grey, in alliance 
with Republican France and America and free Italy, 
against the despotic principle represented by Prussia 
and Austria, the powers of darkness whom the post- 
humous victory of Burke and Pitt made masters of the 
Continent for a hundred years. The fact that all parties 
in our country should in our own day have united to over- 
throw the system of despotism in Europe, and thereby 
* make the world safe for democracy,' throws back the 
light of a new era on the history of British politics in 
1792-4. Even if we regard the war against Republican 
France as having been forced upon us by the French 
Jacobins, we must at least feel that it has indeed proved 
the tragedy that Fox, Grey, and Wordsworth then 
believed it to be. 

And whatever may be thought of the war itself, it 
is impossible for the present generation to maintain the 
distinction that used sometimes to be made between 
the alleged impropriety of Grey's Reform proposals in the 
last decade of the eighteenth century and the acknow- 
ledged propriety of his Reform Bill in 1 8 3 1 ; for it is 
no longer possible to argue that engagement in a great 
war renders Parliamentary Reform unsafe. This theory 
has now been refuted in practice. We have seen Con- 
servative Ministers, in the midst of a struggle with a 
foe more formidable than the French Jacobins, take 
part in passing as a war measure a Bill tantamount to 
manhood suffrage, coupled with the emancipation of 
women. On that day Fox and Grey were pleasantly 
revenged on Burke and Pitt. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE GREAT REPRESSION HARDy's TRIAL GREy's REFORM 

MOTIONS — 1 793-1 797 

' I began attacking abuses thirty or forty years ago when it was almost 
safer to be a felon than a Reformer.' — Sydney Smith to Lord J. 
Russell, 1835. 

* I think this enlightened age, as it is called, is as much given to per- 
secution as the most barbarous. The transportation of the Deputies 
and Directors [by Bonaparte] is not perhaps quite so bad as that of Muir 
and Palmer, because there is the pretence at least of danger from their 
stay ; but such pretences are seldom wanting to persecutors, and are 
always false. Men persecute because they love persecution, and so far am 
I from believing fear to be the true cause of persecution, that I begin 
to think that fear is the only motive that ever can persuade men to suffer 
those who differ in opinion from them to breathe the same atmosphere 
with them.' — Fox to Grey, Oct. 5, 1801. 

Once war had begun, all proposals for Reform were 
but marking out ground for the future, under con- 
ditions sufficiently disagreeable for the present, but 
the few Reformers now left were prepared to take the 
fortune of their faith. In February 1793, while the 
country was resounding with preparations for the war 
in Flanders, the Friends of the People brought out 
their promised Report on the State of Parliamentary 
Representation.^ Its accuracy was not challenged, 

^ See p. 60, above. The Report is printed at the end of Wyvill, 
iii., and can be compared to the contemporary and yet more complete 
History oj the Boroughs of Great Britain, in two volumes, which placed 
the number of proprietary Members for England and Wales higher — 
at 358. 

73 



74 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

though it contained a printed list of the ' proprietors ' 
of all the rotten boroughs of Great Britain ; and Hardy 
tells us that it * gave the people more information about 
the partial and corrupt state of the representation than 
any other publication at that time.' ^ The tables showed 
that more than 300 out of the 513 representatives for 
England and Wales owed their return to individual 
* proprietors ' : half a dozen were put in by the 
Lords of the Treasury ; 88 were absolutely nominated 
by Peers, and 72 had their election secured by the 
influence of Peers ; 82 were absolutely nominated by 
individuals below the rank of the peerage, and 57 had 
their election secured by the influence of such indi- 
viduals. The proprietors themselves numbered 71 
Lords and 91 Commoners. The meagre number of 
11,075 voters returned a clear majority of the Members 
for England and Wales ; 51 constituencies had less 
than fifty voters each. The Scottish Report, equally 
detailed, is summed up in the following words : 

The inhabitants of Scotland are supposed to be near two 
millions ; their representatives are chosen by 2643 ; Scotland 
sends 45 Members ; a single county in England, namely Corn- 
wall, sends 44. 

Seats were openly advertised for sale in newspapers ; 
if the proprietor became bankrupt, his borough influence 
was set down as a saleable asset. * The price of a seat 
in Parliament,' it was said, * was better known than the 
price of a horse.' When at this period the Borough of 
Gatton came under the hammer, the auctioneer referred 
to the advantage and glory of nominating two Members 
of Parliament as * an elegant contingency^ on which he 
expatiated as * the only infallible source of fortune, 
titles, and honours in this happy country.' ^ The pro- 
fessional gentleman was not far wrong. 

1 Add. MSS., B.M., 27814, f. 24. 

* Holcroft, Memoirs, ii. 191. See Veltch, Genesis of Parliamentary 
Reform, chap, i., on the whole subject. 




Charles Grey, M.P. 

From the picture by Sir Thomas Laurence {1793) at Hoxvick. 



GREY'S REFORM MOTION, 1793 75 

On the basis of their Report, the Friends of the 
People drew up a petition to the House of Commons. 
It sets out the anomalies of representation : how 
Cornwall outweighs Yorkshire and Middlesex together ; 
how ' no less than one hundred and fifty of your 
Honourable Members owe their elections entirely to 
the interference of Peers,' in spite of the law forbidding 
Peers to interfere in elections ; how, although the Lower 
House was meant to represent the people and act as 
a check on Crown and Peers, it had in fact become 
the instrument of Peers and Crown. * Private Parlia- 
mentary patronage ' is complained of as the great evil ; 
1 54 patrons ' return a decided majority of your Honour- 
able House.' In place of the multitudinous borough 
franchises of the day — motley relics of mediaeval custom 
and of more recent local chicanery — they pray the 
House * to regulate the right of voting upon a uniform 
and equitable principle.' It is not suggested what the 

* principle ' should be, except that it should be 

* uniform ' — a startling proposal for a great change, 
realised in 1832. 

On May 6, 1793, Grey rose to make the Reform 
Motion of which he had given notice more than a 
year before.^ He moved that the petition of the 
Friends of the People should be * referred to the con- 
sideration of a committee.' In 1780 Universal Suf- 
frage had been advocated by the Duke of Richmond, 
since turned alarmist. 

I do not [said Grey] approve the Duke of Richmond's plan 
of Reform, though I think it better than the present system ; 
any plan would be better which would secure the sending of 
such Members to the House as would vote independently. I 
could [he said] mention a plan which appears to me much better, 

but since he was only moving for an enquiry into the 
state of the representation, he would not now divulge 

* See p. 47, above. 



76 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

his own ideas on the way to amend it. The debate 
that followed was confined to the question whether or 
not an enquiry should be held into the alleged abuses. 
The well-known arguments in favour of rotten boroughs 
were produced to the general satisfaction by Jenkinson. 
That gentleman, who afterwards governed England for 
many years as Lord Liverpool, told the House that : 

We ought not to begin first by considering who ought to be 
electors, and then who ought to be elected ; but we ought to 
begin by considering who ought to be elected, and then constitute 
such persons electors as would be likely to produce the best 
elected. 

By this logic, the worthy Jenkinson made it clear to the 
saviours of their country that the electors who had 
elected them must be the best possible of all electors. 
* By their fruits shall ye know them.' No wonder it 
took Grey forty years to get the better of this particu- 
larly alluring and practical form of the argumentum ad 
hominem. Fox wound up the debate with a fine speech 
for Reform, and then the Honourable Members very 
prudently decided by 282 to 41 that it was best not 
to enquire how they had got into the Honourable 
House. 

In the last months of 1792 the democratic move- 
ment had been in most places suppressed, and every- 
where dominated, by very practical demonstrations of 
aristocratic and popular displeasure.^ It was, therefore, 
not from any arguable necessity, but either out of 
panic, or, as Fox thought, from the love of persecution 
inherent in man, that Ministers from 1793 onwards 
conducted a system of governmental repression that 
soon shocked even the strongly anti- Jacobin opinion of 
the man in the street. During the next generation the 
freedom of the Press in England existed only in name, 

* See pp. 62-63, above. 



PERSECUTION OF REFORMERS 77 

owing to the frequency of Government prosecutions, 
while the right of public meeting and association was 
by law abolished. Nothing was beneath the notice of 
Ministers. Some unwary expression in a sermon or a 
newspaper article, some angry retort rapped out in 
political controversy heated by drink, was enough to 
ruin a man for life. Prosecutions of Reformers, dis- 
senting ministers, and editors lend a sinister interest to 
several volumes of our 'State Trials.' In Scotland there 
was neither justice nor mercy. In England one man 
here and another there escaped by Erskine's wit and 
eloquence, but the greater number of those accused 
were ruined. 

Daniel Holt was sentenced to four years' imprison- 
ment, of which he died, first for republishing a Con- 
stitutional Reform tract of Major Cartwright's, which 
had been held perfectly innocent when it first saw light 
in 1783 ; and secondly for publishing another address 
in favour of Parliamentary Reform of which the judge 
in passing sentence said, ' The second of these libels 
most grossly and impudently asperses the Parliament 
of this Kingdom, and brands them with the imputation 
of venality and corruption, and calls for a Parliamentary 
Reform.' ^ The editor of the Courier was imprisoned 
for calling the Czar of Russia a tyrant. The system 
was so widespread that for fear of the Attorney-General 
no publisher could any longer be induced to print the 
Reform pamphlets of so respectable a citizen as the 
veteran Major Cartwright, or even of the old Yorkshire 
Reformer Wyvill, an avowed opponent of Paine.^ So 
abject was the terror that protests against the worst 
acts of governmental tyranny could not be inserted in 
newspapers.^ Finally, in 1798, Pitt got tired of 
formulating accusations against his political enemies. 



* State Trials^ xxii. and Life of Cartwright, i. 199-200, 

^ Cartwright's Mock Reform, etc., p. 47. Wyvill, iv. pp. xiv, 559. 

=» E.g. Add. MSS., B.M., 27808, f. iii. 



78 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

and kept batches of them in prison for months and 
even years together without trial. 

It is strange that Fox and Grey should ever have 
been regarded as * un-English ' for opposing a system 
which took away the freedom of utterance so long the 
special pride of Englishmen, and subjected our ancestors 
to the perpetual and daily fear of the spy and the \ 
political tribunal. Fox and Grey had a much truer 
conception of the British character, of the spirit of 
our constitution, and of those things for which England 
stands in the comity of nations, than had the men 
who, while they claimed to be monopolists of patriotism 
and sole defenders of the national traditions, completely 
changed the spirit of our laws, substituted Burke's 
terror of the ' swinish multitude ' for Chatham's trust 
in ' loyal Britons,' and attempted to reduce the inhabi- 
tants of this island to the level of the tame nations who 
obeyed the King of Prussia and the Jacobin tyrants 
of France. 

The historian of the revolution of 1688 has re- 
marked that the oppression in Scotland under Charles 
and James II was worse than the oppression in England, 
and that the passions let loose by the revolution when 
it came were proportionately more violent to the north 
of the Tweed. The same is true of the long years of 
tryanny that preceded and caused the more peaceful 
revolution of 1832. ' Thairty-twa ' was an even greater 
deliverance, a more complete reversal of men and things 
in Scotland than in England. In England under the 
old regime there were some popular electoral contests ; 
in Scotland none, even in the counties. In England 
there was municipal life in some boroughs ; in Scot- 
land every burgh was a close oligarchy. At the worst 
period of reaction, one English member out of five 
voting usually voted with the Reformers, but all the 
Scottish members, save one or two, were votes pro- 
curable by Government for value received — Dundas 
knew how. * The Lord Advocate should always be a 



• THE JEFFREYS OF SCOTLAND ' 79 

tall man,' one of them said. * We Scotch members 
always vote with him, and we need therefore to be able 
to see him in a division.' ^ ' Politically,' wrote Cockburn, 
who was through it all, * Scotland was dead. It was not 
unlike a village at a great man's gate. Without a single 
free institution or habit, opposition was rebellion, sub- 
mission probable success.' 

When therefore the spirit of the new age, which 
Burns lived to breathe, puffed out the Scottish Democrats 
so that they began to hold meetings in favour of popular 
representation in Parliament, and to form associations 
to spread the demand, such unofficial action by unprivi- 
leged persons was a thing entirely novel, and, in the eye 
of authority, monstrous. They were regarded as rebels 
and treated as such. The trials of Muir and Palmer 
at Edinburgh are the chief events in the domestic annals 
of our island for the year 1793. Their cases were 
watched from London with tense anxiety, and when it 
was known that the two high-minded gentlemen who 
had advocated Democratic Reform were to be trans- 
ported to Botany Bay for ' leasemaking,' the horror of 
the English Opposition and the satisfaction of the 
English Ministerialists were loudly expressed. Lord 
Braxfield,^ * the Jeffreys of Scotland,' had in Muir's 
case pronounced from the bench that to agitate for a 
popular franchise was, in the circumstances, of itself 
sedition, and that * the landed interest alone had a right 
to representation.' It was in vain that Fox and Grey 
appealed for mitigation of the sentence. Like Bomba's 
prisoners in later times, these refined and educated men 

1 Pellew, Life of Sidmouth, i. 153. 

2 The Judge in Weir of Hermistoun. See Cockbum's Memorials, 
33, 1 1 3-1 17. Braxfield is known in anecdotal history for his apology to 
a lady whom he had cursed in peculiarly foul language for a mistake at 
whist — ' Your pardon's begged, Madam. I took ye for my ain wife.' 
Also for his reply to the reformer Gerald, who pleaded that Jesus Christ 
was an ' innovator ' — ' Muckle he made o' that ; he was hanget.' See 
Cockbum's Examination of the Trials for Sedition in Scotland, 1888, for 
the Muir and Palmer cases, besides the State Trials report. 



8o LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

were loaded with irons and herded with the basest 
criminals in the hulks. Neither Pitt nor his supporters 
were shaken by the numerous public and private appeals 
on their behalf. It was not from ignorance of their 
sufferings but from a deliberate wish that they should 
suffer, that Ministers left Muir and Palmer to their 
fate. 

They suffered, but they were not forgotten. Forty 
years on their names were seen by Lord Grey on the 
banners that welcomed him in the Reform Bill celebra- 
tions at Edinburgh; while Ebenezer Elliot wrote, in his 
' Triumph of Reform ' : 

O could the wise, the brave, the just. 
Who suffered, died, to break our chains ; 
Could Muir, could Palmer, from the dust. 
Could murdered Gerald hear our strains. . . 

But until the coming of the new age, Scotland was 
silenced even more completely than England. For 
she had no Parliament of her own and no real repre- 
sentatives even in the English capital. There was no 
free Press. * As a body to be appealed to, no public 
existed.' From 1794 to 18 16 there was no political 
agitation of any kind ; when in 18 14 an anti-slavery 
meeting was held in Edinburgh, it was remarked that 
* this was the first assembling of the people for a public 
object that had occurred here for about twenty years.' ^ 
The lawyers of the capital were the only men in Scotland 
who were privileged occasionally to open their mouths 
on politics ; from their courageous school of intelligence 
and public spirit issued Brougham, Jeffrey, and the 
Edinburgh Review. 

Grey, who was destined to deliver Scotland in the 
end, was not backward with his protest at the beginning. 
He wound up the debate in the House, and ' told ' in 
the division, when the motion for papers on Muir's 
trial was voted down by 171 to 32. 

^ Cockbum, Memorials, 83-96, 282. 



GREY ON THE SCOTTISH MARTYRS 8i 

The Duke of Richmond [he said] had gone greater lengths 
than either Mr, Muir or Mr. Palmer, in recommending Universal 
Suffrage, and telling the people that they must depend on their 
own exertions in procuring a Parliamentary reform. The efforts 
of the noble Duke and Mr. Pitt in 1782 on that subject may be 
regarded as having produced the exertions of these unfortunate 
gentlemen in Scotland. But v^^hat is the result ? The noble 
Duke and Mr. Pitt sit in His Majesty's Cabinet, and give their 
sanction for carrying into execution the sentences passed on 
Mr. Palmer and Mr. Muir, that they should be banished for 
fourteen years and doomed to live with the outcasts of society. 
I entirely agree with my Right Honourable friend [Mr. Fox] 
that if the criminal law of Scotland is extended to England, it 
will no longer be the country where a freeman could live. 

Ministers, however, thought that something might 
yet be done even with the inadequate laws of South 
Britain. They determined to take not only the liberties 
but the lives of their political enemies in England. In 
May 1794 they raised another cry of conspiracy and in- 
surrection as baseless as that of December 1792. They 
suspended Habeas Corpus, instituted a Parliamentary 
* Committee of Secrecy ' to unravel the hellish design, 
and, with all the solemnity of a Cecil discovering Gun- 
powder Plot, arrested on a charge of high treason the 
shoemaker Hardy ; Holcroft, the play-writer, one of 
the simplest of souls, who walked into Court to give 
himself up ; the lecturer Thelwall, the friend of Coleridge 
and Wordsworth ;^ and Home Tooke, the eccentric 

^ ' We were once sitting in a beautiful recess in the Quantocks,' 
wrote Coleridge, ' when I said to Thelwall, " Citizen John, this is a 
fine place to talk treason in." " Nay, Citizen Samuel," replied he, 
" it is rather a place to make a man forget that there is any necessity for 
treason." ' The habit of the Democrats of this period, of addressing 
each other as ' Citizen,' was unwise, as it had a French flavour. But 
the terms ' Convention ' and ' Delegate ' for their meetings and those 
who attended them from a distance, though objected to as treasonable 
and made a principal ground of accusation in these trials, were names 
and ideas customary among British Reformers in the 'eighties, and Pitt 
himself attended a ' Convention ' in 1782. — State Trials, xxv. 383-388 ; 
Wyvill, iii. 24. 



82 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

and humorous parson-lawyer and philologist, who had 
diverted himself so well at Purley, and who was now 
to divert the nation at Pitt's expense. The spies and 
law officers of the Crown and all the weight of Govern- 
ment influence was directed to getting these and eight 
other Reformers hanged. 

Wordsworth, in that middle period of his genius 
that gave us the ' patriotic sonnets,' when his judgment 
was ripe but not rotten, and his political views for awhile 
partook of the poised balance of the rest of his nature, 
wrote in the ' Prelude,' looking back on these proceed- 
ings of Pitt in the year of Robespierre's catastrophe : 

Our Shepherds, this say merely, at that time 
Acted, or seemed at least to act, like men 
Thirsting to make the guardian crook of law 
A tool for murder ; they who ruled the State — 
Though with such awful proof before their eyes 
That he, who would sow death, reaps death, or worse, 
And can reap nothing better — child-like longed 
To imitate, not wise enough to avoid ; 
Or left (by mere timidity betrayed) 
The plain, straight road, for one no better chosen 
Than if their wish had been to undermine 
Justice, and make an end of Liberty. 

The events of the summer might indeed have calmed 
the nerves of Ministers. * The glorious First of June ' 
which ratified our acknowledged supremacy at sea, 
the fall of Robespierre, and the accession of the Port- 
land Whigs to the Cabinet, might have made them feel 
safe from the poor prisoners whom they had locked 
up in May. But persecution had become with them 
a policy or a habit ; at the end of October the great 
treason trials began, and lasted through the following 
month. 

Grey and his friends knew that their own liberties, 
if not their lives, hung upon the verdict. If Hardy 
could be hanged for founding the Corresponding j 
Society to advocate 'representative government,' onj 




Mary Elizabeth (Ponsonby), Lady Grey, 1776-1861. 

From the picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence at Howick. %,i> 



HARDY'S TRIAL 83 

the ground that it was the * direct opposite of the 
government which is established here ' ; if he was to be 
found guilty of treason because he had summoned a 

* Convention of Delegates,' as the Reformers patronised 
by Pitt had done twelve years before ; if Home Tooke, 
who had publicly denounced not only Paine's doctrines 
but universal suffrage, was to be hanged for associat- 
ing with the members of the Society for Constitutional 
Information — if in short Pitt succeeded in this as he 
had succeeded hitherto in all his other alarmist moves, 
then the Friends of the People might expect to be the 
next victims. As late as 1798 Pitt confessed to Wilber- 
force that he lacked only the means, not the will, to 
imprison Fox ; ^ and if he had not now in 1794 received 
a check from the juries, the Parliamentary Whigs would 
have been in very real danger. This was Lord Holland's 
life-long opinion. And Erskine, the great advocate 
who now saved England from a reign of terror, said 
to Thelwall, while they were waiting for the decisive 
verdict of the first trial, that if Hardy was found guilty 
on such evidence, he himself and the rest of the Whigs 

* must all fly to America without delay.' ^ 

Grey believed that if Hardy swung his own neck 
would be in danger. The autumn of 1794 was a 
memorable season in his life. He had just become 
engaged to be married to Miss Ponsonby, a love match 
if ever there was one, and the prelude to fifty years' 
unbroken happiness. Before him was the full prospect 
of the best things life can give, which he of all men knew 
how to value — but across it, on the threshold, lay the 
shadow of the prison and the gallows. Under such 
conflicting emotions he wrote his first extant letter to 
his future wife : 

1 Life of Wilberforce, ii, 422-3. Pitt's letter. May 5, 1798. 
Fox had said that the House of Hanover owed its throne to the 
people. 

2 Add. MSS., B.M., 35154, f. 28. Holland, Further Memoirs, 
p. 296. 



84 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

The first trial, which will be Hardy's, comes on on Thursday. 
I believe I shall attend it, in order to learn how to conduct myself 
when it comes to my turn. You see by these new constructions 
of treason they have found a much better way of disposing of 
obnoxious persons than by sending them to Botany Bay, and one 
which will save both you and me a great deal of trouble. I 
am not, however, very ambitious of being classed even with 
Algernon Sydney. 

His next letter to Miss Ponsonby is dated from the 
bench of the Old Bailey, where he had been accommo- 
dated with a seat beside the judge, with Major Cart- 
wright at his elbow. Below, in the presence of a great 
political audience, two future Lord Chancellors, Erskine 
and Scott [Eldon], were contending, not without mutual 
discourtesy, for the sympathies of the Tory jurymen, 
and no less was at stake than the potential life and 
liberty of every English Reformer. It was a scene 
more fraught with real issues and more truly dramatic 
than the expense of spirit in Westminster Hall, where 
Burke and Grey were still obliged to meet in the 
manager's box — one shudders to think on what terms ! 
— as joint prosecutors of the great Proconsul. Here 
it needed no splendours of imagination and rhetoric to 
hold the interest of the auditors, half of whom felt 
themselves to be on trial beside the accused. On the 
third day of the proceedings Grey tells the lady who 
was to share his fortunes : 

I am writing from the Bench, with a Judge at my elbows, 
who I am not quite sure does not think I ought to be in Mr. 
Hardy's place at the bar ; and I cannot write more than a single 
line. They are now examining one of the Government spies 
who has been employed to frequent a meeting at Sheffield, and 
who is exhibiting a shocking scene of infamy. 

On this day Erskine scored his first great point by 
reducing Alexander, a paltry successor of the great 
Titus Oates, to the state in which all such wretches 
deserve to be reduced in the witness-box. 



ERSKINE SAVES THE DAY 85 

' Look at the jury, do not look at me. Sir ; I have had enough 
of you, I wish you would look at those gentlemen ; they are 
very good-looking men ' ; and then, as the wretch writhed and 
stammered, ' I am entitled to have the benefit of this gentleman's 
deportment.' Lord Chief Justice : ' Give him fair play.' 
Erskine : ' He has certainly had fair play ; I wish we had as 
fair play — but that is not addressed to the court.' Mr. Attorney- 
General \_Eldon'] : But whom do you mean ? ' Erskine : ' I am 
not to be called to order by the bar.' 

Another witness he addressed as * good Mr. Spy,' 
until the Court interfered. It was partly by such simple 
arts and such honest indignation that Erskine won over 
the twelve ' good-looking ' men on whose puzzled con- 
sciences so much of English history depended. It 
was no easy task, for he was striving against a mass of 
prejudice and influence. Day after day the sword of 
justice still hung doubtful over the head of Hardy and 
the heads of the host behind him. Grey's undated 
notes to his future wife follow one another thick : 

Of this trial I will say nothing. I have no power to express 
my abhorrence of the whole proceeding. If this man is hanged 
there is no safety for any man. Innocence no longer affords 
protection to a person obnoxious to those in Power, and I do 
not knoAv how soon it may come to my turn. 

So horrible a scene of perjury as was exhibited last night, 
makes one blush for the depravity of nature. But what shall 
we say of those who can employ such instruments, to whose 
means of seduction, which poor men often cannot resist, these 
horrors are owing, and who are neither more nor less than con- 
spirators against the lives of their fellow men. 

After the breakdown of all evidence about arming 
for insurrection and communications with the French,^ 
after Erskine's great speech to prove that propaganda 
is not treason, and after a neutral summing up by Lord 
Chief Justice Eyre very different from Lord Braxfield's 

^ In November 1792 the democratic societies had rashly communi- 
cated with the French : but never once since war broke out. 



86 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

on Muir, the jury retired for three anxious hours. One 
thing, probably, weighed with them, though it should 
not. Everyone by this time knew that public opinion 
In the capital, though strongly anti-Jacobin, was in 
this case as strongly against the Government. And 
when they had brought in Hardy Not guilty, the re- 
joicings that night were such as to be long remembered 
among the historic outbursts of London's joy. 

By so much had Pitt outstripped the panic of his 
own partisans. If he had tried Hardy for sedition, 
instead of on the capital charge, he would, in the then 
state of opinion in the street, in the jury box, and on 
the bench, have probably got an honest but unjust 
verdict of ' Guilty.' The check he had now received 
in court, enthusiastically endorsed by a public opinion 
that was politically favourable to him, showed that the 
mass of our countrymen were not bloody-minded, and 
that their dislike of the French political methods of the 
day was not hypocrisy. Erskine the Whig, and the 
twelve jurors believed to be Tories, had between them 
saved our common English civilisation, which the man 
in the street valued more highly than did the politicians 
to whose charge it had been specially trusted. 

If it had been anxious work for Grey and Miss 
Ponsonby, it was tragic for poor Hardy, as honest a 
fellow as ever sewed shoe-leather. Months before he 
came up for trial he had learnt from the gaoler that 
his wife was dead. Far gone with child, she succumbed 
to the shocks she had received, first when the Bow 
Street runners seized her husband and ransacked their 
house, and again when a Government mob attacked it 
to celebrate the victory of the First of June. Hardy's 
own life was saved, but he lost most of his business, for 
respectable people would not deal with the men whom 
Windham and the Ministerialists chivalrously described 
as * acquitted felons.' But Hardy was made of stuff 
as stout as any of the working-class leaders who have 
succeeded him. He lived to an honoured old age and 



HORNE TOOKE'S TRIAL 87 

held his head high. At length, when the young states- 
man who had watched his trial had become the Reform 
Premier, Hardy wrote to Hobhouse, in April 1 8 3 1 : 

You perhaps will smile when I say that I am now for the 
first time a Ministerial Man. I rejoice greatly to see the great 
cause of civil liberty prospering, and that I have lived so long to 
witness it. Having now entered the eightieth year of my journey 
of life, I am now thirty-seven years older than it was decreed in the 
Privy Council of erring mortals that I should be. It is really 
an extraordinary change or revolution that has taken place in 
this country. The King and his Ministers turned Parliamentary 
Reformers ! They are committing the very same crime, if 
crime it be, that the Pitt and Dundas infamous Government 
charged the Reformers in 1794 with, the highest crime known 
in our laws — High Treason ! 1 

In comparison with the tension and tragedy of 
Hardy's trial, the case of Home Tooke that followed 
was almost a comedy, and the gallant ex-parson did his 
best to make it seem so. While he was returning one 
cold night from Old Bailey to Newgate, a lady admirer 
pressed forward and put a handkerchief round his neck. 
' Pray, madam,' he said, * be careful, for I am rather 
ticklish at present about that particular place,' While 
in prison, he sang every night at dinner an old Whig 
song against the House of Stuart that he had learned 
from his grandmother : 

Here's a health to our old constitution. 
Let the trumpets sound 
And the hautboys play. 
Huzza ! huzza ! 
To the downfall of all tyranny ; 
I long to see the day. 
Huzza ! 

Grey, Sheridan, and Erskine went to Newgate to witness 
one of these jovial evenings. ' I always disliked him,' 
writes Grey, * and never met him before but in contest. 

^ Add. MSS., B.M., 36466, f. 309. 



88 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

But the oppression and persecution of which he is the 
victim made me forget all that is past. Our going 
seemed to be a real comfort to him. He is in very- 
good spirits, and whether the issue be life or death, I 
think he will conduct himself like a man.' 

Home Tooke worthily revenged himself on the 
statesman whom he had so often supported politically, 
and who was now angling for his life : he haled Pitt 
into the witness-box and made him look foolish. It 
turned out that Pitt had sat with Home Tooke as a 
* delegate ' at a * convention * for Reform in 1782. 
The ' delegates ' then had been gentlemen, and now 
they were working men ; that, no doubt, made all the 
difference, but it was difficult to draw a legal distinction. 
The element of the incongruous that struck everyone 
outside ministerial circles, in the notion of Pitt hanging 
his old supporter, is reflected in Brooks's betting book, 
where we read, in Grey's handwriting, October 11, 
1794 : 

General Fitzpatrick bets Mr. Grey 5 guineas to i that 
Mr. Home Tooke is hanged before Mr. Pitt. 

Yet for all this grim jesting, Tooke's chances of sur- 
vival were not estimated very high, for while his trial 
was going on Lord Townshend and Grey had an even 
guinea on his being hanged, Grey taking the optimistic 
view.-"- 

Home Tooke was acquitted, and said that he hoped 
it would make the Attorney-General more cautious in 
future. After Thelwall, the lecturer, had in his turn 

* There had been some speculation at Brooks's about Grey's and 
the Duke of Bedford's matrimonial prospects in the summer, at a time 
when Grey must have been pressing his suit for Miss Ponsonby's hand. 
On July 27, 1794, we read : ' Col. Tarleton bets Mr. Grey 5 guineas 
that he [Grey] is married before the Duke of Bedford.' And again on 
July 30, 1794, 'The D. of Bedford bets Lord Lauderdale ten guineas 
that neither his grace or Mr. Grey are married on or before 30 July, 1795-' 
The Duke died a bachelor in 1802. 



GREY'S MARRIAGE 89 

been tried and found ' Not guilty,' the remaining nine 
were discharged. 

A few days before this happy conclusion the joy- 
bells rang for the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Charles 
Grey (Nov. 18, 1794). We shall often have occasion 
to dwell on the homely delights and ever-increasing 
preoccupations of a patriarchal state, which made Grey 
one of the happiest of men and the least active of poli- 
ticians, during the long years when he was content to 
be prime minister of populous Howick. But during 
the first two years after his marriage (1795-6) he was 
still hard at work in Parliament, speaking again and 
again for the liberty of the subject, opposing the 
perpetually renewed suspension of Habeas Corpus, and 
attacking Pitt in good set terms for persecuting his old 
Reform associates ' with the real bitterness of an apostate.' 
Grey told the House that he would * rather live under 
Nero or Caligula ' than in contemporary France, but 
that ' those who were most violent in their declamations 
against the proceedings in France, were the most servile 
in their imitation of them.' 

It is agreeable to see that Grey now put himself 
forward against an unduly large grant to the Prince of 
Wales out of the public money. During the rest of 
his life he was ill seen at Carlton House, save on some 
rare occasions of princely expansion which he never 
strove to turn to account. Indeed, in his thorough- 
bred aristocratic pride, he was as little suited for a 
courtier's life as the noisiest democrat of the Corre- 
sponding Society. 

He warmly supported a motion for altering the 
game laws of that period,^ which confined the pleasures 
of shooting to a small and arbitrarily chosen section of the 

^ Grey shot well, but he was not an ardent sportsman. In Nov. 
1804 he writes to Fox from Howick : ' There were a good many wood- 
cocks here when they first came over, but the weather continuing mild 
and open, they are gone further into the country. But I seldom shoot 
now.' 



90 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

landed gentry, for whose benefit the harsh and inquisi- 
torial game code was enforced against all other classes 
in the kingdom. The motion was lost, after Jenkinson, 
who always said the juste mot, had remarked that it was 
* a time when every deviation from legal custom ought 
scrupulously to be guarded against.' Such was the 
avowed principle of those who were supposed to make 
our laws, during the advent of the Industrial Revolution; 
tragically enough, social and economic changes could 
not be induced to wait till * legal custom ' was on the 
move again. England was hurried on, while her laws 
stood still. 

But indeed the laws did not stand still ; they went 
back. In the winter of 1795 began the period of 
repressive legislation, as if there had not been enough 
repression already under the old laws. 

Since the acquittal of Hardy on the high treasoft 
charge, the numbers of his Corresponding Society had 
gone up, in spite of public disapproval. In 1795 ^^ 
many as 2000 members were regularly attending their 
divisional meetings in London.^ The Society thus 
continued the work it had begun of educating the work- 
ing men to read and to think, and to associate for political 
objects. But the Ministers were still determined to 
crush it, and since the old laws had failed them, they 
were ready to make new ones. 

They found their opportunity in the rough demonstra- 
tion against the King's coach in October 1795, which they 
attributed to the Corresponding Society and to a monster 
meeting recently held under its auspices in Copenhagen 
Fields. When the King went to open Parliament on 
October 29 a starving mob had hissed the state coach, 
and followed it crying out, * No Pitt ! No war ! Bread, 
bread ! Peace, peace ! ' It was an established custom for 
discontented mobs in the eighteenth century to hiss the 

1 Add.MSS., B.M., 35143, ff. 8-11. 



THE MOB AND THE COACH 91 

coach, without any republican or other theoretic implica- 
tion ; and the mob in 1795 was not a republican but 
a peace-and-bread mob. The glass of the state coach 
was broken by a missile that was certainly not a bullet 
or aimed with any murderous intent.^ 

The broken glass of the King's coach supplied 
Ministers with material for a panic, a little better per- 
haps than that out of which they had worked up the trial 
of Hardy. But this year they took care to succeed by 
appealing not to a court of justice but to the High Court 
of Parliament. The Christmas session thus opened was 
occupied in the passage of two Bills, known as the 
* Gagging Acts,' against Seditious Meetings and Trea- 
sonable Practices. The first of these m^ade it illegal for 
more than fifty persons to assemble for any purpose 
not approved by the m.agistrates, and visited with the 
penalty of death those who refused to disperse when 
ordered. The magistrates of that time were such violent 
partisans that this meant the end of public meetings to 
criticise government. With an eye on Thelwall, lectures 
were subjected to kindred resrtictions. The Treasonable 
Practices Bill made it high treason, punishable by 
transportation, to speak or write against the Constitu- 
tion ; as Fox said, a man was now to be sent to Botany 
Bay if he argued that Manchester ought to have as 
many members as Old Sarum. Pitt's father would 
have cut off his right hand rather than introduce such 
a Bill. 

Grey wrote to his mother-in-law, Mrs. Ponsonby : 

You will have heard a great deal of the attack made on the 
King the first day of the session. That there was a most violent 

1 Add. MSS., B.M., 35143, ff. 15-19, 37-50, where Place gives 
a very amusing inside account of the whole affair, and shows the absence 
of connection between the demonstration and the Corresponding Society. 
All the same, one of the most ruffianly of the leaders of the mob round 
the coach was a member of the Corresponding Society (J. Binns^ Recol- 
lections, 54-6). 



92 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

and furious mob is certain, expressing, in a tone which it would 
be well for him to attend to, their discontent and impatience 
under the grievances which they suffer. But that there was 
any serious attempt made or attempted to be made on his person, 
I do not believe. The idea of a ball having been shot at him 
is completely done away by positive proof, from a person who 
saw it, that the window of his coach was broken by a stone. 
This, tho' an outrage much to be lamented, differs materially 
from an attempt on his life. Ministers, however, do all they 
can to propagate the alarm, and last night a new Treason Bill 
in consequence of it was introduced by Lord Grenville into 
the Lords. We shall oppose it, but I have no doubt of its being 
carried by acclamation through both Houses of Parliament. 

The most celebrated speech in the debates on Pitt's 
* Two Acts ' was made by Horsley, Bishop of Rochester, 
who said that ' he did not know what the mass of the 
people in any country had to do with the laws but to 
obey them.' It was one of those phrases that attract 
attention because they blurt out the real issue on which 
parties are contending. 

A furious agitation, for and against the two Bills, 
arose, the last stir of political life before the * Euthanasia,' 
as Fox called it, settled on the country for twenty years. 
Throughout November loyal addresses and petitions 
for the Bills were handed about, accompanied by every 
kind of intimidation and calumny against those who 
refused to sign. Even so the signatures against the 
Bills were said to be over 130,000 and the signatures for 
them only 29,000. Yet Place, who gives us these figures, 
afterwards wrote : 

Infamous as these laws were, they were popular measures. 
The people — ay, the mass of the shopkeepers and working people 
— may be said to have approved them without understanding 
them. Such was their terror of the French regicides and demo- 
crats, such the fear that ' the throne and the altar ' would be 
destroyed.^ 

1 Add. MSS., B.M., 35143, f. 52 ; 27810, f. 91. 



PITT'S GAGGING ACTS 93 

This no doubt was the prevalent feeling in London, 
which Place knew so well. But in the North a somewhat 
different atmosphere seems to have prevailed. The 
feeling in Northumberland was so hot against Pitt's two 
Bills, that while Grey opposed them at Westminster his 
constituents held a county meeting at Morpeth with 
Sir John Swinburne in the chair, and sent up to their 
member a petition against the Bills from the * Noblemen, 
Gentlemen, Clergy, Freeholders and Inhabitants of the 
County of Northumberland.' In London Grey took 
it round to the Duke, who signed it, and then carried 
the document to the King at St. James's Palace, where 
it * was very graciously received,' he writes, * though 
perhaps the prayer of it will not be much approved, and 
I fear certainly not granted.' No other county except 
Derby petitioned as a corporate body. Even the county 
meeting at York was divided.^ 

The Bills passed, and political life died out in England. 
The new laws destroyed the usefulness of the Corre- 
sponding Society and the other democratic clubs, which 
dwindled and disappeared, the last of them being 
abolished a few years later by an ad hoc statute. In 
February 1796 Fox wrote : 'The whole country seems 
dead, and yet they certainly showed some spirit while 
the Bills were pending.' 

Since it was now by law criminal to agitate the main 
questions of politics anywhere outside the walls of 
Parliament, it behoved the opposition members to be 
more than ever vigilant and active in the one place where 
free speech was still permitted. Major Cartwright 
wrote to Fox that the Bills were ' intended for silencing 
for ever the voice of complaint, especially on the grand 
subject of Parliamentary Reform ' ; and that when they 
were passed it would rest * almost wholly with the friends 
of freedom in Parliament to nourish the cause of freedom.' 

^ Grey's letters to his Northumbrian supporter, Mr. Thomas Bigge, 
August to December 1795, and Wyvi/l, v. pp. xxiv-xl and 314-16. 



94 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Unfortunately, by the great dereliction of duty known 
as* the Secession,' the Reformers in the House took a 
precisely contrary course. But before they indulged 
in the selfish ease of ' Secession,' they salved their con- 
sciences by one last great demonstration in force on 
May 26, 1797, when Grey made his second motion 
for a reform in Parliament. That debate and division 
is the last milestone in the Parliamentary history of the 
question until after Peterloo. 

Grey was at this time in favour of household 
suffrage. On March 8, 1794, he had written to Major 
Cartwright explaining why he would not go as far as 
the Major's logical scheme for universal manhood 
suffrage : 

A considerable part of the dispute seems to me to turn upon 
a misapplication or a misrepresentation of the rights of men. 
Nobody holds those rights, which it is now so much the fashion 
to speak of in mockery or reproach, higher than I do ; but they 
do not consist in universal representation or in any particular 
form of government. Government being formed for the protec- 
tion and security of rights, whatever mode is best calculated to 
produce that end, whether it be universal or a more limited 
system of Representation, is that to which people have a right. 
It is from such a conviction that in the formation of a new system 
I should wish to stop short of Universal Representation. If a 
right of voting, so extensive as to comprehend all the householders 
of the Kingdom, were established, the present system of corrup- 
tion would be completely defeated, and all the advantages that can 
be expected from a system of Universal Representation, without 
many of its mischiefs, would be obtained. 

In May 1795 the Friends of the People met once 
more after an interval of a year, during which they had 
* agreed to suspend their proceedings ' owing to the 
war and the general discouragement of Reformers. At 
this meeting, which proved to be their last, they adopted 
an elaborate scheme of reform, including a redistribu- 
tion which would destroy the rotten boroughs, and a 



GREY'S REFORM MOTION, 1797 95 

household rate-paying franchise, uniform for the whole 
country.^ 

Two years later Grey based his scheme on these 
proposals of the Friends of the People, except that he 
confined the rate-paying franchise to boroughs. His 
motion in the House on May 26, 1797, was more definite 
than in 1793.^ He now rose to ask ' leave to bring in 
a Bill,' and the Bill was outlined in his speech. He pro- 
posed that Parliaments should be limited to three years ; 
that the poll should be taken on one day throughout the 
whole island ; that ' if possible, one person should not 
be permitted to vote for more than one member of 
Parliament.' He proposed to raise the English and 
Welsh county representation from 92 to 113 and to 
extend the right of voting in counties now confined to 
freeholders to certain classes of copyholders and lease- 
holders. 

For the boroughs he proposed much greater changes, 
beginning with a complete system of redistribution, 
which would have abolished rotten boroughs and given 
the great towns a considerable though not quite a 
numerically proportionate representation. He would 
have the 400 members for these newly formed borough 
divisions elected * by one description of persons, which 
were householders, paying taxes ' (viz. rates). ^ Fox, 
speaking later in the evening, explained that this meant 
householders paying scot and lot, that is Church rate 
and poor rate, and that this would give an electorate 
of 600,000 for all the boroughs, which * would give to 

^ Wyvill, V. pp. xlii-xxiv. ' That every householder in Great 
Britain, paying parish taxes, except Peers, should have a vote in the elec- 
tions of one member of Parliament.' 

* P. 75, above. 

^ The Parliamentary Report omits the words ' paying taxes,' v\^hich 
are found in the report in the St. James' Chronicle. Both reports are 
very poor. In his letter to Cartv^^right in 1794, quoted above. Grey 
had spoken of ' householders ' w^ithout qualification, but Fox's speech 
on May 26, 1797, explains Grey's plan on the assumption of its meaning 
householders paying ' scot and lot.' 



96 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

every member about 1500 constituents.*^ Fox thought 
this was restoring our old constitution, not going for- 
ward on any French system ; he declared that ' the 
common law right of paying scot and lot was the right 
of election in the land ' in old days, and quoted ' the 
celebrated Glanville ' as his authority. He objected, 
he said, to universal suffrage, not because it would 
lead to a wild democracy, but for the opposite reason 
that it would enfranchise servile and dependent classes. 
' Housekeepers ' suffrage would give the largest pos- 
sible number of * independent * voters. 

These proposals of Fox and Grey for a household 
or rate-paying franchise were, in principle at least, 
nearer the Act of 1867 than to the Act of 1832 ; on 
the other hand. Fox's figures, if correct, do not seem 
very large. But the ' nicely calculated less or more ' 
did not trouble either side in 1797. The arguments 
used against Grey's motion were arguments against any 
and all reform as ' Jacobinical ' in the circumstances 
of the time, rather than against any particular scheme 
as being too extensive. Neither were the Foxite 
Whigs frightened by the boldness of the measure, 
which was a flag of battle rather than a practical pro- 
posal. As many as 91 members voted for Grey's 
motion, against 2^6. 

At the end of his speech Grey had foreshadowed 
the secession of the Foxites from Parliament, by the 
singular announcement that if his motion was not 
carried, he would not in future speak in the House, 
but only vote on important measures. And Fox him- 
self, in winding up the debate, declared that he would 
henceforth devote more of his time to his private 

1 The Friends of the People, in May 1795, had calculated that the 
scheme would give about 1,200,000 voters, or about 2400 constituents 
to each member {Wyz>i//, v. p. xxii). But this was based on the calcu- 
lation of applying the rate-paying franchise to counties as well as to 
boroughs. 



REFORM AND SECESSION 97 

pursuits, * and the leisure that I love.' It is a pity that 
so fine a public service as these two had just rendered 
was marred by so impotent a conclusion.^ ^ 

^ The working-class movement for Parliamentary Reform and its 
suppression by Pitt, described in these chapters on account of its impor- 
tant relation to Grey's contemporary action and subsequent career, has 
held too little place in the political histories of this period. Indeed, it is 
only of recent years that such indispensable sources of information in 
Add. MSS., Place Papers^ British Museum, were first brought into the 
light by Mr. Graham Wallas in his biography of Place. Now, fortu- 
nately, this grave lacuna in our historical knowledge is being made good, 
for example, in the study of the question by Pitt's latest biographer^ 
Professor Holland Rose ; and, from a different point of view and in 
more detail, in Mr. Veitch's Genesis of Parliamentary Reform^ 191 3> 
and in The French Revolution in English History, published in 191 8, 
after Its brilliant and well-loved author, Mr. P. A. Brown, had been 
killed in action. But even so the Place Papers have only been skimmed. 
Large selections from them ought to be published, so that the question 
between Pitt and the working-class Reformers could be judged by the 
world on fuller knowledge. 



CHAPTER V 

THE SECESSION THE FOXITE WHIGS AT HOME- — HOWICK 

IRELAND 1 797-1801 

' If our reliquiae could be kept together, if it were only Russells and 
Cavendishes and a few more, with you at the head of them, not only 
would it give me great satisfaction, but it might be a foundation for 
better things at some future period.' — Fox to Grey, March 12, 1803. 

* How I do long to return to Tacitus and our own comfortable 
fire ! ' — Grey to his Wife, Dec, 29, 1799. 

The Secession of the Foxites from the House of Com- 
mons lasted intermittently from the winter of 1797 for 
about three years, when it gradually came to an end 
as Whig after Whig stole back to his place. At no 
time was it complete. Tierney attended regularly, 
Sheridan occasionally, and on the question of the Irish 
Terror the whole party under Fox came up to vote. 
But there was no consistent opposition for three years. 
Lord Lansdowne, fully reconciled to the Whigs in 
their adversity, tried to save them from committing this 
mistake. * Secession,' he said, * means rebellion, or it 
is nonsense.' In this case it was nonsense. Fox and 
Grey were not riding off with pistols and broadswords 
in their belts to proclaim a. Republic from St. Anne's 
Hill, or to call out the train-bands of Northumberland. 
They left Westminster, not to make history, but to 
read and write it ; to learn Homer by heart, and to 
dispute together about Chaucer and the Faery Queen. 
They could find only the feeblest political excuses for 
a defection that was in fact personal. They said it was 

98 



EVILS OF SECESSION 99 

a protest against Government tyranny, but the floor of 
the House was the one place in England where that 
tyranny was not exercised to silence debate. Attacks 
made on the Government in the House could be reported 
in the newspapers without fear of prosecution. The 
debates were in those days the chief means of political 
education, and newspapers gave two, three, and some- 
times all four sides of their single sheet to very full 
reports. During the years when Pitt's repressive legis- 
lation had given a monopoly of free speech to Members 
of Parliament, the Liberal party there refused to exercise 
it. And the country suffered accordingly. 

Pitt is said to have been vexed by the cessation of 
his enemies' fire from the front, because it encouraged 
his great supporter to attack him from the rear. When 
the King turned recalcitrant, he could now no longer 
threaten him with Fox. It is possible that in this way 
the denial of Catholic Emancipation as an accompani- 
ment of the Union, the well-head of Irish troubles 
in the nineteenth century, was indirectly the outcome 
of the Secession. It was certainly the triumph of 
George III and the more reactionary Cabinet Ministers 
over Pitt. 

In matters where he did not differ from the King, 

■ Pitt was left absolute master of the field. It was during 

the Secession that Pitt systematically imprisoned large 

numbers of Reformers for years together without trial, 

''■ treating them like convicts and feeding them on bread 

and water.^ While England was adopting the system 

\ of lettres de cachet of old France, scarcely a voice was 

j; raised against the scandal : the Press was gagged by 

\ fear of prosecution, and those Liberals who might have 

spoken in Parliament so as to be heard had deserted 

their post. Now also (i 799-1 800) the infamous and 

disastrous Combination Acts suppressing Trades LTnions 

were passed, opposed by Lord Holland alone in the 

1 Add. MSS., B.M., 27808 ff. 1 10-12, 27809' ff. 203-61; Oxiade's 
narrative, 1 798-1801. 



loo LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Lords, and by Sheridan almost alone in the Commons. 
The rest of the Opposition were ' in secession,* enjoying 
the leisure of their country homes while the Govern- 
ment was perverting the whole growth of the new 
industrial society.^ 

During the same period when he had no criticism 
to fear, Pitt determined to alter the Toleration Act in 
a way that would soon have filled the prisons with 
Dissenting ministers, whom he had come to regard as a 
species of black Jacobins. His Cabinet approved the 
plan, and in 1800 he was only dissuaded from carry- 
ing it into effect by the strong remonstrance of his 
friend, Wilberforce. That excellent man found much 
in Pitt's conduct to lament. It was the hour of Dundas 
and the powers of darkness. The slave trade, once 
threatened and hard pressed, now throve exceedingly ; 
to descant upon its horrors was the sign of a * Jacobin,' 
and Dundas could raise in the House * a roar that has 
seldom been equalled ' by a sneer at Wilberforce and 
his ' straggling humanity.' It was a sorry ending for 
a great century, which had ushered in far other hopes 
for mankind.^ 

A portion of the responsibility for the evils that 
befell the British islands between 1797 and 1801 must 
be assigned to Fox and Grey, who preferred domestic 
joys and the cultivation of the Muses to the work of 
an unpopular Opposition, that always seems but never 
is quite useless. Grey, supported by Bedford, Lauder- 
dale, and Whitbread, was the chief mover for secession 
in 1797 ; in twelve months he had repented and wished 
the step retraced. Fox, more slow to consent on public 
grounds, though yet more anxious for personal retire- 
ment, warned the * young ones ' that if once they per- 
suaded the old man to come away it would be harder 

1 Hammond, Tozon Labourer, chap. vii. ; Graham Wallas' Place^ 
chap. viii. 

* Wilberforce, Life, ii. 17-19, 336, 360-6, 397. In 1805 Dundas 
had reason to be sorry that he had provoked a saint. 



FOX IN RETIREMENT loi 

still to make him come back. When it was proposed 
to draw up a public statement of the reasons for seces- 
sion, it was found that ' every individual differed as to 
principles and motives.' Those of Fox and Grey were, 
in truth, nothing more subtle than disgust with the 
course of politics, and a simple human preference for 
books and gardens, family and friends.^ 

Married life was new and delightful both to the young 
man and the old. Grey's family was just beginning 
its long increase. Fox, who had given up gambling 
when the party paid his debts in 1793, two years later 
secretly married Mrs. Armitstead,^ and became thence- 
forth as truly domesticated a character as Farmer George 
could have wished any of his subjects to be. He who 
in youth had left a princely fortune on the gaming 
table, now found his happiness in shopping with his 
wife, buying * cheap china, for they were great econo- 
mists ' ; in lying still for hours on a green bank, in the 
very spirit of Andrew Marvell, until he taught the 
jays of St. Anne's Hill not to fear his motionless form, 
but to continue their depredations on the old fruit-wall 
opposite ; in reading for his history of James II ; and 
in writing to Grey on such topics as this : 

In defence of my opinion about the nightingales, I find 
Chaucer — who of all poets seems to have been the fondest of the 
singing of birds — calls it a merry note, and though Theocritus 
mentions nightingales six or seven times, he never mentions 
their note as plaintive or melancholy, Sophocles is against us.^ 
I am afraid I like these researches as much better than those 
that relate to Shaftesbury, Sunderland, etc., as I do those than 
attending the House of Commons. 

1 Lady Holland, i. 148, 180, 215. Holland, Memoirs, i. 84-94. Fox, 
Memoirs, iii. 136-7. 

' The marriage was made public in 1802. In 1803 Grey writes 
to Mrs. Grey : ' Fox seems in the highest spirits and is in the best looks. 
He is like a young man in the prime of life who has just married a girl 
of sixteen. Is it not a fine thing to grow young at fifty ? ' 

3 Wordsworth thought as Chaucer and Fox. See ' O Nightingale, 
thou surelv art.' 



I02 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Burke used to harangue his friends for an hour on 
end about the * ambition ' of Fox, declaring that he sought 
to overturn the constitution, * because a Government like 
ours was not a proper one for great talents to display 
themselves in * ; while Gillray week by week depicted 
him inviting over the French or striking a treaty with 
the Devil. How very different was the real Fox, and 
how different his real crime — to have yielded when his 
followers pressed him to join their retirement from the 
public arena ! * At no time,* so those who really knew 
him have reported, * did the warmth of his heart, the 
sweetness of his temper, and the refinement of his taste 
give such tranquillity to his home. The trees and the 
flowers, the birds and the fresh breezes gave him an 
intense enjoyment, which those who knew his former 
life of politics and pleasure could hardly have imagined.' ^ 
Other friends of liberty suffered much in these bad 
years, and Fox felt for them deeply, but of his own 
happy life these years were the happiest. When he 
was in politics he liked to win, but he could well afford 
to lose. * Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.' 

Fox was a mighty worker and a mighty idler. In 
his second capacity he was no good example for Grey, 
whose worst political fault was inactivity. But his 
precept at least was good enough. When Grey wrote 
to him : * What am I doing } you will ask. Literally 
nothing. If it be true, as Burke said, that Idleness is 
the best gift of God to man, there never was anybody 
so highly favoured of heaven,' Fox replied : * I love 
idleness so much and so dearly that I have hardly the 
heart to say a word against it, but something is due to 
one's station in life, something to friendship, something 
to one's country.' 

Fox at least idled no further off from the scene of 
action than St. Anne's Hill ; but Howick was three, 
four, and sometimes even five days' posting from 

^ Fox, Memoirs^ iii. 35; Malmesbury, ii. 448. 



GREY'S HOME LIFE 103 

London, according to the luck of weather, wheels, and 
horseflesh. In the Parliamentary recesses of 1795, ^> 
and 7, Grey and his wife lived at Howick as his uncle 
Henry's guests and prospective heirs. His extreme 
unwillingness to leave Mrs. Grey and Howick, which 
became the plague of successive generations of his 
colleagues, was already a pleasing absurdity. But the 
querulous tone of his letters in absence is the measure 
of his extreme happiness when at home — a happiness 
which diffused itself through all the family at Howick. 
In November 1799 he writes to his wife : 

Look at all your rich acquaintance, and tell me whether 
the situation of any of them is really and intrinsically as happy 
as ours. I will answer the question for myself, and in doing so 
I think I may answer it for you too, that there is no creature 
upon earth with whom I would change : no, not even with 
Bonaparte. 

He was never a rich man — a man with fifteen 
children seldom is — and at this time, when his family 
was as yet small, his means were smaller still. In a 
series of letters to the most active and friendly of his 
constituents, Mr. Thomas Bigge, in which he tries to 
excuse himself for being at Howick during the autumn 
session of 1797, one of the reasons that he gives for 
his own truancy is that — owing, of course, to Mr. Pitt's 
* infamous impositions ' — he cannot afford to keep an 
establishment in London or move his family so far in 
the winter. He offers to resign his seat if, as Sir John 
Trevelyan of Wallington warns him may occur, there 
is a county meeting held to consider the * secession * of 
their member. Meanwhile he will thank Bigge to 
send him ' Southey's and Coleridge's poems,' those 
gentlemen being interesting young enthusiasts in the 
Democratic cause. 

A year later, at Christmas 1798, he roundly con- 
fesses to Bigge that the Secession was a mistake, and 
that he has put himself into a most difficult corner. 



I04 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

When one takes a single wrong step, there is no line to be 
pursued which does not lead into some kind of embarrassment. 
A total secession without resigning my seat, I must acknowledge 
to be wrong, and so long as it is out of my power (on account 
of private reasons which have not escaped you) to resign my seat, 
and still less in my inclination to take any active part while Fox 
abstains from doing so, there is no mode of conduct I can adopt 
which in my own opinion would be perfectly right. 

The difficulty was that if he returned to Parliament, as 
he now wished to do, it would be said that he had 
decoyed Fox into secession in order himself to return 
and step into the vacant leadership. The course which 
he actually adopted of a graduated return to his Parlia- 
mentary duties, accompanied at each stage by strong 
appeals to Fox to come back too, in the end freed him 
from the snare in which he had entangled himself. 
Even the hypercritical Lady Holland wrote on the 
subject : ' Unless I knew Grey to be of an honest, 
open, warm-hearted character, I should myself suspect 
a little fraud, but I fully acquit him.' From January 
1799 onwards Grey attended on Irish nights only, to 
oppose the Union ; from November 1800 onwards he 
took part in all the debates and made some effective 
speeches about national burdens, imprisonment without 
trial, and other grievances ; in March 1801 Fox put 
in his first appearance, and very gradually and unwil- 
lingly resumed the leadership. During all these nice 
operations the personal friendship of Fox and Grey 
was never once overshadowed, but went on ripening 
until, excepting always Lord Holland, Grey stood 
decidedly first in Fox's political affection.^ 

1 In 1799 Grey writes to Holland : ' I have had a letter from your 
Uncle [Fox] which deprives me of all hope of his attending even one 
discussion upon the Union, and to say the truth makes me feel a little 
uncomfortable about my own attendance, though I am sure he did not 
mean that it should have that effect.' The letters from Fox to Grey 
are preserved from 1 800 onwards, those from Grey to Fox from December 
1802 onwards. See also Lady Holland, i. 215 ; ii. 139-40. 



ARISTOCRATIC DEMOCRATS 105 

The social life of the Whig Opposition at this period 
is almost as important a subject for study as its political 
activities, if we would learn how in that age a Parlia- 
mentary party attached to the principles of Reform 
managed to survive the long reaction. The secret lies 
in a paradox. Fox's scanty followers were more demo- 
cratic politically and more aristocratic socially than the 
Whigs of any time before or after. The party chiefly 
consisted of the Dukes of Bedford and Norfolk, Lords 
Holland and Thanet, Lansdowne and Stanhope, the 
Cavendishes and a few score of other gentlemen of 
fashion, some of them sitting for rotten boroughs 
belonging to members of this circle. Such was the 
party that had in May 1797, at the bidding of Fox 
and Grey, voted 9 1 strong for Household Suffrage. On 
Fox's birthday in the following January, the Duke of 
Norfolk gave the toast ' Our Sovereign, the People.' 
He was at once dismissed from his lord lieutenancy 
and his colonelcy of militia. Fox, in a fit of generosity, 
repeated the toast, and was cut off the Privy Council. 
Pitt wrote to his intimates that he would like to put 
Fox in prison, but could not trust a jury. Fox's letter 
to the Duke of Norfolk expresses the sense in which 
the toast had been given : 

My dear Lord, — The toast relating to the sovereignty of 
the people will be universally and I believe truly considered as 
the cause of your removal, and thus you will be looked up to as 
the marked champion of that Sovereignty, ander which alone 
King William and the Brunswick Kings have held their throne. 
The Ministers call for unanimity, for suspension of party disputes, 
for the purpose of repelling a foreign enemy, and then they dismiss 
Your Grace from not only a Lieutenancy, but a Regiment, for an 
opinion certainly of a theoretical nature at any rate, but an 
opinion which to have controverted in the times of the first 
two Georges would have been deemed a symptom of disaffection.^ 

These genuinely democratic aristocrats attracted to 

^ Unpublished. 



io6 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

themselves a considerable number of the old Whig 
connection who cared little for democracy, but who 
found Tory society insupportably tedious. The Foxites 
had captured Brooks's, and many who regarded dining 
and talking there as the chief privilege of life, were in 
that way gradually won back through personal channels 
to political connections they would otherwise have 
repudiated. In this way the Cavendishes now,^ and 
some years later the Spencers and Lord Fitzwilliam, 
drifted back into the party. * The Duke of Devon- 
shire,' writes Lord Holland, ' a man of little popular 
feeling and still less exertion, but of great probity, 
honour, and good sense, and fond of the society of 
Mr. Fox and of his immediate friends, had been with 
great difficulty brought to vote once or twice with the 
Administration.' In June 1794 we find him betting 
at Brooks's with Lord Thanet that the Duke of 
Portland will not take office under Pitt. And when 
Portland immediately proceeded to disappoint his ex- 
pectation, Devonshire for his part went back to the 
Fox connection. ' In this,' says Lord Holland, * the 
Duchess of Devonshire was not a little instrumental. 
In a very short time after the feverish and unnatural 
separation of 1793 she had the satisfaction to see most 
of that society, of which she was the ornament and 
soul, reunited in the support of Mr. Fox.' 

It was now a very small and a very select society. 
They were men of fashion in an age when to be fashion- 
able was neither easy nor vulgar. They were men of 
culture, with a knowledge of Greek, Latin, French, 
Italian,^ and English literature very uncommon in later 
times. The Tories called them Jacobins and * outcasts,' 
but they in turn looked down upon the Tories as some- 
what unfashionable and decidedly illiterate people, 

^ Lord Frederick Cavendish was brother to Mrs. Grey's grand- 
mother, Lady Betty Ponsonby. The Greys often stayed at his seat, 
Twickenham Park, during the 'nineties. 

» See note at end of this chapter. 



THE FOXITE WHIGS AT HOME 107 

although Pitt had nine-tenths of the upper classes 
and the writers of the Anti-Jacobin on his side. * If 
Pitt had any learning,' wrote Fox, ' or if those of his 
friends who have, had any genius,* they would quote 
Demosthenes, * who is better adapted to their side of 
the question.'^ 

Politics and seats in Parliament went by privilege 
in those days, and if all the privileged classes had been 
reactionary, Reform would never have come without 
civil war. It is easy to sneer at the Whigs for being 
aristocrats, but it is lucky that in an aristocratic age a 
few aristocrats were Liberals. Whig fashion and cul- 
ture had their effect on our political history, for they 
strengthened the minds of these few men to hold out 
in favour of Reform, against the frown of power and 
against the opinion of their fellow-countrymen, and to 
wait in the cold of opposition for forty years. Litera- 
ture consoled them for loss of power, and aristocratic 
pride made them indifferent to the censure of society. 
If they had not been such aristocrats, they would not 
then have dared to side with democracy. 

A gathering at one of their great country houses, 
like Holkham or Woburn, where they stayed together 
for weeks at a time, shooting, riding, reading, and above 
all talking and listening to Fox talk, was the one thing 
which could partially compensate Grey for absence from 
Howick — ^itself such another place, but smaller and 
more homely. He often writes to his wife from 
Woburn, the Duke of Bedford's place, as on July 23, 
1800 : 

I did not find as large a party as I expected. It at present 
consists of Fox, Lord Robert [Spencer], Fitzpatrick, Lord John 
Townshend, [Philip] Francis, Dudley North, Richardson, and 

^ I suppose the dangers of the Macedonian power, denounced by 
Demosthenes, would correspond to the dangers from French aggression. 
Did Fox mean they were to quote Greek in the House ? Members 
would, I suspect, have understood it almost as little as their successors 
would now understand Latin. 



io8 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

myself. Sheridan and Adair are expected to-day, and Hare 
to-morrow. Fox is in the highest spirits. It is quite delightful 
to see such a man in the midst of a society which he appears to 
like, so unassuming, good humoured, and cheerful. Everything 
seems to be a source of enjoyment to him, and I hardly know 
which to envy most — his amiable disposition or his unrivalled 
talents. When I descend from admiring him to think of myself, 
how I sicken at the contrast ! He is enthusiastic about poetry, 
and admires Spenser as much as we do. You may remember 
how cheap Francis appeared to hold us for this taste at Wool- 
beding.i He is not stout enough to disparage Spenser as much 
as he did then, before Fox, but I assure you his opinions upon 
this subject, as far as he has ventured to express them, have gained 
him no applause. 

The room we inhabit is the Library, where we lounge over 
books or join in conversation as suits our inclination. In this 
manner the morning, or the greater part of it, passes, with 
perhaps a sauntering walk in the pleasure ground, or the Tennis 
Court, where Fox and Lord Robert generally play for an hour 
or two. We dine at four, and generally walk out after coffee, 
after which there is a Party- of the good players, from which I 
am excluded, at Whist, in a room which opens into the Library, 
where the rest of the party amuse themselves as in the morning. 
Supper is served in another adjoining room about eleven, after 
which we generally sit up pretty late. 

In June 1801 his benevolent uncle offered Howick 
to him as his own residence. 

I have news to tell you [he writes to his wifej such as will, 
I think, be equally surprising and pleasing to you. Sir Harry 
has in the handsomest way possible consented to our going to 
Howick, and to our living there on our own bottoms in future. 
You must begin soon to make your preparations, and above all 
prepare yourself to become a very notable Farmer's wife, for we 
shall be very poor, but I hope, too, very comfortable. 

So on July 17, 1801, they entered Howick as its master 
and mistress, and on the anniversary of that day, forty- 
four years later, he there died. Sir Harry, whose kind 

^ Lord Robert Spencer's house, near Midhurst in Sussex. 




Charles Henry, Balaam George Louisa William 

(General) Ld. Howick (the donkey) (Admiral) (Lady Durham) (died 1815) 

(3rd Earl) Frederick 

Elizabeth (Admiral) 

(Lady Elizabeth Bulteel) 

Some of the Grey children on the sea-shore near Howick, 1813. 
From the picture by Henry Thomson, R.A., at Howick. 



FAMILY LIFE AT HOWICK 109 

act almost amounted to an inspiration, lived bachelor- 
wise in London and elsewhere till his death in 1808. 

The house which they entered in that first summer 
of the new century was the same dignified but com- 
fortable mansion of good Northumbrian stone that now 
conceals itself homelike among the tall trees.^ But 
those trees are, with a few older exceptions, of Grey's 
own planting. And it was he who made and planted 
the mile-long track down the bottom of the burn's 
cleft to the sea — a favourite haunt of the tribe of chil- 
dren and the invariable Sunday walk of young and old 
together. When the rocky coast is reached by this 
pleasant path, the quarry can still be seen whence Sir 
Harry in 1780 hewed out the grey stones that now 
are Howick. There, too, is Howick Bay, a sandy cove 
encircled by rocks, where the supplies from London 
were sometimes landed.^ And there is the lonely 
sandstone cottage that was abandoned to the children 
for a seaside study and playhouse, as soon as they were 
old enough to look after themselves among the rocks. 
Public schools were not part of the family plan. Indeed 
the Grey boys and girls — the girls, fortunately, the 
elder — were numerous enough to be a school in them- 
selves under governesses and tutors at Howick (see 
Genealogical Tree, end of book). Grey's second son, 
Charles, writes : 

When I speak of a childhood and youth of more than common 
happiness, I do not speak too strongly. Rarely indeed, if ever, 
has the grown man or woman had reason to look back upon that 
early period of life with such fond recollection. 

And he adds : 

^ The outer hall, containing the entrance vestibule, was added by 
Grey about 1812, together with some of the stables and outhouses. 

2 They would come by boat from Alnmouth, having come to 
Alnmouth by ship. Such sentences as ' a great cargo of books is gone 
by an Ahimouth ship ' are common in Grey's family letters. The 
servants went to and from London by ship at the yearly move. 



no LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Considering the nature of the rocks forming the coast of 
Howick, over which we clambered at will, it does seem almost 
like a special protection of Providence that averted any serious 
accident. 

Three miles north along this secluded coast, on the 
other side of the fishing village of Craster, stood the 
ruins of Dunstanborough, grandly alone on their pro- 
montory. There, under the castle walls, was the wild 
and dangerous landing-place where Queen Margaret 
of Anjou had stepped ashore on one of her desperate 
enterprises. The place was regarded as haunted at 
night, and Lord Grey told his visitors that * the fishermen 
often see lights moving among the ruins.' The legend 
of the Castle ghost, * Sir Guy the Seeker,* was thrown 
into the ballad of that name by ' Monk ' Lewis, when he 
was stopping on a visit at Howick. 

The country between the hills and the sea consisted 
of rolling grass lands, mostly open moor when Grey settled 
at Howick in 1801, but enclosed in large fields in the 
course of the next thirty years.^ It was perfect for a gallop 
across, were it not for those sudden little precipices so 
common in Northumberland ; one of these near Howick 
was called ' the Heugh,' along the top of which was a 
favourite ride. On one of his journeys up to Parlia- 
ment, in January 1808, Grey writes from the inn at 
Grantham : 

When the sun was shining with a fine mild air, I figured 
to myself you and my two sweet girls on the Heugh. I saw 
Ida [the mare] going beautifully ; and the light on the house 
and craig behind, with a calm blue sea, were delightful to my 
imagination. Oh that I could see them in reality ! Yet I am 
very confident that my stay in the place I hate most will be short. 

Grey seldom lacked an excuse for delaying his 

* It is pleasant to remember that wages and conditions were far 
better in Northumberland for the agricultural labourer all through this 
period than in the south or in the country generally. See O. J. Dunlop, 
The Farm Labourer^ pp. 87-90. 



FAMILY LIFE AT HOWICK iii 

loathed return to ' the place I hate most,' for it was 
odds but either one of his numerous progeny was ill, 
or another one expected. On one such interesting 
occasion, in the last days of December 1 8 1 o, when the 
arrival of a small new Grey at Howick happened to 
coincide with an incipient Cabinet crisis connected with 
the Regent's velleites towards the Whig aspirants to 
office, the happy father writes to Whitbread from 
Howick : * I would not have been absent to be myself 
Regent or King.' Fox, and Holland after him, often 
smiled over these excuses, which annoyed less good- 
natured colleagues. And in the days when the 
nurserymaids at Howick and elsewhere threatened 
their recalcitrant charges with * Boney,' he had the 
further excuse, pleaded to Fox in October 1803, that 
* to leave my family in so exposed a situation, under 
the possibility of the enemy's landing, I hold to be 
impossible, and I am sure you will admit it.' In the 
following February, still safe at Howick, he writes to 
his benignant chief : * I am not afraid of any serious 
landing here, but even an alarm might be unpleasant, 
and we had one, owing to a mistake in firing the beacons 
in Berwickshire, only yesterday.' This was none other 
than that famous night alarm when, on the other side 
of the border, Mr. Oldbuck girt on his old sword, and 
Lovel and Hector were reconciled in their country's 
defence.^ 

The comedy of these excuses for staying at Howick 
and lamentations at leaving it, lasts a good thirty years. 
In October 1809 Tierney writes to him : 

Which of your ancestors it was who purchased or seized an 
estate in Northumberland I do not know, but I wish with all 
my heart he had been knocked on the head for selecting such 
an out-of-the-way spot for the residence of his descendants. 
There are a thousand things which it would be most desirable 
to talk over. No good can be done unless you come to town. 

^ The end of Scott's Antiquary. 



112 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

In 1 82 1 it is still the same story ; Grey writes to his 
wife : 

To describe my melancholy at having left you all is impossible. 
Oh how I wish I was now going on with ' Kenilworth Castle ' 
to the same audience that I had last night ! ^ 

At length, in 1830, he seems to have felt satisfied of 
the necessity of occupying Downing Street awhile ; but 
after his retirement from office and public life in 1834 
he could stay at Howick all the year, and there was no 
man to make him afraid. 

The trouble was by no means over when he had 
been fairly got to London. In January 1805 Fox 
writes to him at Howick : 

And now as you have addressed yourself to Mrs. Fox, let 
me do so to Mrs. Grey, and beg her not to think of letting you 
come alone, or that at least she will follow very soon after. God 
knows when you are in town without her you are unfit for 
anything, with all your thoughts at Howick, and as the time 
for which your stay may be necessary must be uncertain, you 
will both be in a constant fidget and misery. 

He was never really well in London. He is always 
complaining of what he calls his ' London feels.' 
Holland House, in Kensington, then well out in the 
country, was often a refuge to him. He was there 
more and more often as the years went by, the lord 
becoming ever dearer to him and the lady less formid- 
able. 

I came here yesterday to dinner [he writes in 1 808J, and 

^ Not Scott's Kenilworthy but a poor imitation of Scott, if we may 
judge by the rest of the letter. Scott wrote fast enough in all conscience, 
but not fast enough to supply his devotees at Howick and elsewhere. 
Some of them were even then capable of criticism. ' We are in the 
middle of the Pirate^ writes Lady Georgiana Grey ; ' I like it, but Papa 
does not — he says it bores him.' In December 181 5 Lady Holland 
writes to Grey : ' This new novel of Mrs. \sic\ Austen's is very inferior 
to her former writings. It is called Emma. It is really very flat and 
without any interest, else I would send it you.' 



IRELAND 113 

having been most kindly pressed to do so, stay till to-morrow, 
when the Hollands themselves go to town. I always like Lord 
Holland's company, and the least breath of country air makes me 
feel so much better than I do in London. 

Grey was on intimate terms with his wife's relations, 
the Ponsonbys, the famous Liberal family of Ireland, 
answering to the Tory Beresfords who were identified 
with the existing system. From the time of his marriage 
in 1794 he took a deep interest in the tragedy enacting 
over there. During the last years of the century he 
corresponded across the Channel with his wife's father, 
William, afterwards (1806) first Lord, Ponsonby ; with 
her uncle George, leader of Opposition in the Irish, as 
afterwards in the English, House of Commons ; and 
with her mother, who also was a shrewd adviser on her 
country's affairs. 

It is a satisfaction to record that one day, in the 
middle of their ' secession,' the Whigs appeared in the 
House of Commons, led by Fox, and took part, over 
sixty strong, in a debate and division on the horrors 
that had provoked the rebellion then raging in Ireland. 
Burke, who had died the year before, had with rare 
insight called the Protestant ascendancy of that day 

* Jacobinism,' and indeed it would take a casuist to 
choose between the wickedness of systematised torture 
in Ireland and of systematised massacre in France. On 
June 22, 1798, the day after the rebellion thus pro- 
voked had been crushed at Vinegar Hill, Lord George 
Cavendish and Lord John Russell,^ in the English 
House of Commons, moved a vote of censure on the 
Irish Government for its harsh treatment of the 
Catholics and their claims, and after that had been 
defeated by 212 to 66, Fox moved a motion condemning 

* scourges and other tortures employed for the purpose 
of extorting confession ' ; but a motion that * the House 

1 Afterwards 6th Duke of Bedford ; father of the great ' Lord John,' 
then a child of five. 



114 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

do now adjourn ' was carried by 204 to 62. Grey 
spoke on the first motion. The Tories had cleared the 
galleries, so that this damaging debate might not be 
reported in the newspapers or in the Parliamentary 
reports.^ But some account of this inquisition held in 
camera is given in Grey's letter to his mother-in-law, 
Mrs. Ponsonby: 

Bad as the public accounts [from Ireland] are, they are not 
worse than I expected, or than I shall continue to expect, so long 
as that horrible system, to which I for one shall for ever ascribe 
the present revolt, continues to be acted upon. We made all 
the efforts we could to give some check to it, and I really thought 
that by the last debate in the House of Commons we had made 
at least such an impression with respect to the conduct and 
language of my Lord Clare, as would probably have occasioned 
his removal from office. Indeed, the whole Irish Government 
in the House of Commons was, in a great measure, given up. 
Our animadversions upon them were not answered. In the 
attack upon the [Irish] Chancellor [Fitzgibbon, Lord Clare] 
persons even on the other side, Wilberforce for instance, joined 
us, and there seemed to be a very general disposition to shift 
the blame from our Ministers here to the Government there, 
which I thought might lead to some changes. 

In the House of Lords, however, a very different tone was 
assumed, and put an end to all these speculations. 

To me, who think that the use of the scourge and the bayonet 
will only create fresh provocations, and that, though we may 
gain victories, victories will not gain the people, the accounts 
published every day in the Government papers furnish only fresh 
matter of despondency and dismay. 

Then followed the Union, which, being unaccom- 
panied by Catholic Emancipation, perpetuated for 
generations to come the race hatred engendered by 
these events. Throughout 1799 and the following 
year Grey made a point of attending Parliament on 
Irish nights, although until November 1800 he still 
* seceded ' from the House on English questions. * I 

^ Pari. Hist., xzxiii. pp. 1511-1517. 



IRELAND 115 

feel,' he writes to his wife, ' as eager to defeat the Union 
as if I were myself an Irishman.' But neither his 
efforts in England nor those of his kinsmen in Ireland 
could avail, and in 1801 the brothers William and 
George Ponsonby were sitting as Foxite Members of 
the Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland. 



Note to p. 106, Fox, in his letter to Lord Holland of February 18, 
1 796, has a long passage, written in very choice Italian, discussing the 
merits of various Itahan poets and authors. The passage is omitted 
as irrelevant in Fox, Memoirs, iii. 1 30-1 31. I here append a translation 
of ' By the Banks of Allan Water,' by Grey, from a copy in his own 
handwriting, now in possession of Lord Halifax. 

Dell' Adige sul lido 
Isaura m' incontro, 
Dei fiori di Primavera 
Omata e bella ando. 
La cerco un cavahero 
Giurando etemo amor, 
Sull' Adige non era 
Donna piij lieta allor. 

Quando d'autunno i frutti 
Cogliea la giovenu, 
Isaura vidi ancora 
Ma non sorrise piu. 
Pria che pass6 la State 
Lasciolla il Traditor, 
SuU' Adige non era 
Donna piu maesta ancor. 

Con nimbi intanto e gelo 
L'Invemo ritorno. 
Ma il rigor del cielo 
Isaura non euro ; 
Non pianse piu I'infido 
Piu non la strinse amor, 
Dell' Adige sul lido 
Morta giacea allor. 



BOOK II 

THE STAGNATION OF PARTIES 

1801-1830 

INTRODUCTORY 

Milton ! thou should'st be living at this hour : 
England hath need of thee : she is a fen 
Of stagnant waters : altar, sword, and pen, 
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower 
Have forfeited their ancient English dower 
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men. 

So wrote Wordsworth, when the century ended in 
misery and gloom ; nor did the severe language of the 
poet do more than give an English voice to what all 
Europe then thought of us. Burke, Pitt, and Fox were 
great men, but each had his own terrible shortcomings, 
and under the malign presiding influence of King George 
the net outcome of their dealings with the country they 
all loved so well was little better than the poet has said. 
Even Milton, one fears, would scarcely have helped, 
for Pitt would have sent him to Botany Bay. And so 
we had, when the reforming century opened, a Press 
and platform silenced ; an Opposition sulking out of 
Parliament ; suspicion of the * lower orders ' as the 
potential enemies of the State, instead of that frank 
trust of the people that has belonged to all the great 
periods of English history ; the poor in town and 
country sinking to the lowest depth of dependence and 

117 



ii8 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

of want ; Ireland an epitome of the evils that mis- 
government can inflict on mankind ; our military fame 
diminished ; our one triumph and safety the * storm- 
beaten ships ' that have never failed England in her need. 
But the next thirty years that lie between the Treaty 
of Amiens and Grey's Reform Ministry saw the most 
astonishing revival of * sword and pen,' and raised our 
country's reputation in the world to a point that it had 
scarcely touched under Queen Anne or Queen Elizabeth. 
Nelson and Wellington adorned their country with 
honours won in fair fight from the greatest fighting 
man and fighting nation that the world had ever seen. 
Scott made the study of British antiquities, manners, 
and history the concern of all educated men and women 
in both hemispheres, counteracting the Napoleonic roar, 
that filled the highways of Europe, with something 
quiet and old and British ; Byron mocked the Holy 
Alliance, and both of them together made the Romantic 
Movement ; while Wordsworth and Coleridge, Turner 
and Constable, Shelley and Keats, Lamb and Jane 
Austen made England even greater than foreigners 
knew.^ And besides so much genius of the first order, 
the little island was full of remarkable men — Cobbett 
and Brougham, Cochrane and the Napiers, Porson and 
Bewick, Eldon and Sydney Smith, Coke of Norfolk, 
and dozens more of that time whose names or faces 
crowd upon the memory; all stand self-planted like 
forest oaks, deep-rooted and growing, each after his 
own singular pattern. We have become more civilised, 
more social, more subtle than that race of men, but 
decidedly less interesting. No wonder the country that 
could boast such children was proud and strong, first 
defeating Napoleon, and then under Canning turning 
round to defy the priests and despots whom we had exalted 

* It is true that several of these had done much of their best work 
prior to 1800, in the period stigmatised as sterile in the lines of Words- 
worth quoted above. 



POLITICAL STAGNATION 119 

in his place. In comparison with other countries of 
contemporary Europe we had, as the poet had prayed, 

Manners, virtue, freedom, power. 

But these thirty years, so great in the breed of men 
and in the noblest trophies of letters and of arms, were 
fatally sterile in politics. England could organise her- 
self for no social purpose, and allowed her millions to 
become the economic prey of the blind forces of war and 
of the unguided industrial revolution. It was the period 
of the stagnation of parties. We have seen how, during 
the French Revolution, three parties had been formed — 
the anti- Jacobin Tory, the Reforming Whig, and the 
Paineite, later called the Radical. From 1800 to 1830 
they all three remained as they had begun in the 'nineties, 
without any change in their respective principles, or in 
the distribution of power between them. The Tories 
governed as they pleased ; the Whigs waited, content 
to preserve their own identity ; the Radicals, after 
Waterloo, gained some influence over the public opinion 
of the masses, but none on the action of Government. 
The omnipotent Tories adopted Burke's later creed that 
the laws of the eighteenth century must apply for all 
ages to come, and that demands for change in Church 
or State must be answered by * criminal justice.' A 
doctrine of such extreme conservatism would have done 
less harm in mid-eighteenth century, when England 
was in a condition of stationary welfare ; but when 
rigidly applied by Eldon and Castlereagh to England 
in the vortex of economic and social change, it was 
utterly disastrous. The state to which it reduced 
Ireland became evident even to the Duke of Wellington 
when he surrendered to O'Connell in 1829. The state 
to which it reduced England when Grey took office in 
1830 was such that the dissolution of society seemed 
only too probable, and was in fact only averted by the 
commencement of an age of rapid reform. 

Grey, as we have seen, had been active and effectual 



I20 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

during the formation of parties. But during the 
stagnation of parties he slumbered. Throughout this 
period of waiting his main duty was to sit still. In 
fact he sat too still. He refused either to ally himself 
with the Radicals or to enter upon a reform agitation 
in rivalry with theirs. But at least he had the merit 
of keeping the Reforming Whig party opposed to the 
existing system of repression in Church and State. In 
the new century he did nothing to create a stream of 
reform opinion, but he kept the Parliamentary channels 
open and the Whig party machine ready to act as the 
popular instrument, against the day when the flood 
should come ; and when it came the mill worked and 
ground the corn of a new and happier age. 



CHAPTER I 

THE ' EUTHANASIA ' AND THE CONFUSION OF PARTIES 

PEACE AND WAR 180I-1805 

* If the country has, as I think it has, though tacitly, changed the 
nature of its government, it would be exceedingly absurd to say that 
the small Minority who lament that change, after having used their 
efforts to prevent it, should exclude themselves from any participation 
in the new system.' — Unpublished letter of Fox to William Smith, 
Nov. 15, 1801. 

In these words the Whig leader defined the attitude of 
his followers, when on their return from the Secession 
they found the political life of the country dead, the 
popular societies abolished by law, the Press gagged, 
and the thought of the people preoccupied wholly with 
the monstrous power of Buonaparte. The * euthanasia 
of politics ' that Fox had so long dreaded had in fact 
set in. He and Grey gradually ceased to agitate for 
Reform,^ since the question could no longer find a 
response outside Parliament. Accepting the fact that 
the Liberal elements in the constitution had been sup- 
pressed, they had yet to decide whether they would 
take an active, and if necessary an official, part in working 
the new system which they disapproved but could not 
alter. This question, which remained to plague the 
Whigs many years after Fox had been taken from them, 

1 At the general election of July 1802 Grey made a strong pro- 
nouncement at Alnwick for reform of Parliament as being ' indis- 
pensable' {Creevey, Nov. 4, 1834). This opinion he never once in his 
life abandoned, but he ceased to urge it frequently. 



122 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

arose out of the situation created by the events of 
1801. In that year, although Tory principles remained 
unchallenged in all departments of national life, the 
Tory party began to break up on personal issues 
into so many hostile sections that Whig help would 
clearly be required to unite with one or other of 
these, if a Government was to be formed of ex- 
perience and ability on a level with the dangers of 
the State. 

Although the quarrels of the Tory leaders were 
mainly personal, especially in their later developments, 
they arose in the first instance from the semblance of 
dispute on a public question. Pitt had aspired to make 
the Act of Union an act of reconciliation, by permitting 
Roman Catholics to sit in the Parliament of Great 
Britain, from which, as also from the late Dublin Parlia- 
ment, they had hitherto been excluded. Irish Roman 
Catholics had acquiesced in the Union only because this 
prospect had been held out to them. They were now 
to find themselves deceived. George III developed 
conscientious objections to Catholic emancipation, as a 
measure contrary to the principles of his coronation 
oath. Pitt therefore resigned, and Addington took his 
place as Prime Minister in February 1801. Pitt had 
resigned, not in order to coerce George into submission, 
but to salve his own conscience, and possibly also to 
enable a new Minister to make peace with France on 
terms which he himself would have found it mortifying 
to accept. For any good it could do to Ireland, his 
resignation was rendered worse than useless by his 
promise that he would not again bring forward the 
Catholic question in the lifetime of George III. This 
act of submission to the Royal will was made on the 
ground that George III would otherwise go mad for 
good and all. Periodic fits of lunacy had recently 
returned, and the astute patient, in his lucid intervals 
of sanity, had made use of his privileges as an invalid 
to extort from Pitt this surrender of principles on the 



THE TORIES AND NO-POPERY 123 

top of his resignation of office. Mr. Lecky has remarked 
that Pitt 

would have deserved more credit for his delicacy if it had not 
coincided so perfectly with his interest, and if it had not involved 
him in what may be not unfairly called a gross breach of faith 
with the Catholics. 

Pitt's promise never again to disturb the King's 
mind with the grievances of his Irish subjects enabled 
the Tory party to become, in its popular appeal, the 
No-Popery party. All effective championship of Roman 
Catholic grievances was henceforth left to the Whigs, 
and made them more unpopular than ever, both with the 
country and the Court. Grey felt bitter resentment 
against Pitt, and against Canning after him, because, 
while holding Liberal views on the Irish question, they 
consented to leave it in abeyance, and to reap all the 
advantages of favour with Crown and people as heads 
of the No-Popery party. This state of things con- 
tinued after the final madness and the death of George III, 
for the Prince of Wales had become almost as anti- 
Catholic as his father before he was called on to succeed 
him. When, after Waterloo, the Tories became the 
unpopular party, they still retained a last hold on the 
sympathy of the masses through the No-Popery cry.^ 
Much that was strongest, both good and bad, in the 
English nature was at that time expressed in a hatred 
of the Church of Rome. The religious revival of the day 
took the form of Evangelical Protestantism, alike in 
Church and Chapel ; the Marian persecution and the 
massacre of St. Bartholomew were household words, 

As late as 1831 young Gladstone, canvassing for the Tories, 
wrote : ' You would be astonished how unanimous and how strong is 
the feeling among the freeholders against the Catholic question. 
Reformers and Anti-reformers were alike sensitive on that point and 
perfectly agreed. One man said to me, " What ! Vote for Lord 
Norreys ? Why, he voted against the country hoik times — -for the 
Catholic Bill (1829) and against Reform " ' (Morley's Gladstone, bk. i. 
chap. iii.). 



124 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

alike in cottage and in hall ; the easy-going and often 
sceptical toleration, characteristic of the age of Gibbon, 
had given place to a stern and bitter temper against 
' infidelity ' on one side and * Popery ' on the other. In 
these circumstances, the unselfish conduct of the Whig 
leaders in their championship of this hated cause for 
thirty years, on behalf of people with whom they had 
nothing in common in religious, political, or social en- 
vironment, and who could not lend them a single vote 
in either House of Parliament, goes far to ennoble the 
annals of English statecraft between 1800 and 1829. 

While the Addington Ministry was in process of 
construction. Grey thought it would prove at least as 
bad as its predecessor. 

It is formed [he wrote to Wyvill on February 11, 1801] 
avowedly on the same principles in every respect but one [the 
denial of Catholic emancipation], in which it differs from the old 
administration only in carrying to a greater length than they 
did the principle of Intolerance and Persecution. Such an 
appointment, destitute as it is of character, of property, of talents 
and of principles, ought not to create any relaxation [in the 
business of opposition]. 

Yet the very weakness of Addington's Cabinet in talents 
and prestige led to a less rigid enforcement of the system 
of persecution begun by Pitt. The new Prime Minister 
was to some extent afraid of opposition, and since he 
had so few friends among his fellow-statesmen, he could 
the less afford to be bitterly hated by the people. The 
Reformers who had been kept in prison for several 
years without trial were released in March 1801,^ and 
in the following year, after the Peace of Amiens, a 
certain increased freedom of the Press was perceptible. 
Moderate Reformers like Wyvill dared again to publish 
their pamphlets.^ There was some respite in the activity 
of the persecutors, but there was no real freedom, for 

1 Add. MS., B.M., 27808, fF. 112-113. 
* Wyvili, iv. p. XV. 



PITT AND ADDINGTON 125 

repression had become a permanent system and the 
spirit of resistance was dead. 

The talent of the Tory party had gone into 
opposition or retirement. Grenville and Canning, the 
heavy troops and the Hght, were alike contemptuous 
of the unfortunate * Doctor,' who had nothing but the 
courteous bedside manner of his father's profession to 
recommend him as a physician of State. 

Pitt is to Addington 

What London is to Paddington 

summed up their view of the situation. Nor can it be 
doubted that a Cabinet which excluded Pitt and Fox, 
Canning and Sheridan, Grenville and Grey, and was the 
butt of the satires and cartoons of all parties in the State, 
aroused the easily moved scorn of Buonaparte at the most 
critical stage of our relations with France, when only a 
very strong Government over here had any chance at all 
of rendering peace permanent. Buonaparte, after ex- 
tracting excellent terms from Addington at the Treaty 
of Amiens, proceeded to push on his encroachments in 
Central Europe as if there were no more need to reckon 
with England. It is very possible that not even Pitt and 
Fox together could have preserved peace with Napoleon, 
but it is certain that it was far beyond the Doctor's skill. 

Addington had soon to look round for ' talents ' 
to strengthen his Ministry, and since Pitt's followers 
were so hostile, he began to court the Whigs. 

There were personal divisions in the Whig as well 
as in the Tory camp. Fox, Grey, Holland, and their 
friend the Duke of Bedford, who died in 1802, formed 
the core of the party, while Sheridan and Tierney and 
to a less degree Erskine were severally detached from 
this central group. 

Sheridan and Grey had been mutually antipathetic 
ever since the days of the Regency debates, and fresh 
grounds of offence were always occurring. Fox and 
Grey regarded Sheridan's influence at Carlton House, 



126 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

and the use to which he put it, with constant 
suspicion. 

It is quite impossible to place any dependence on the Prince 
[wrote Grey to Fox in August 1803], and the similarity of 
their characters in some respects is, I believe, one cause of 
Sheridan's influence over him. 

In January 1802, at a Whig Club banquet, Sheridan 
had spoken of 

those persons who, thrown by accident in the outset of life into 
situations for which they are not fitted, become Friends of the 
People for a time, and afterwards, finding their mistake, desert 
the popular cause. {Reiterated plaudits and laughter.) 

It was a most gratuitous attack on a colleague. Grey had 
in no sense * deserted the popular cause.* Grey's comment 
to his brother-in-law Whitbread is scarcely too harsh : 

My dear Sam, I do not think Sheridan can have the excuse 
of being drunk for what he said, or if he had it is but a poor 
compensation for me, whilst an attack is circulated in all the 
newspapers so obviously directed that nobody who knows that I 
was chiefly concerned in the institution of the Friends of the 
People and at that time * in the outset of my political life^ can 
misunderstand it. The applauses of the Club were if possible 
more disgusting than Sheridan's attack. As to being drunk, I 
know that Sheridan has the peculiar faculty of making a beast 
of himself where nobody else would, yet immediately after the 
cloth was removed, upon one of the first toasts after dinner, 
industrious and active as he is in this respect, I think he 
could hardly so soon have completed his daily work. But this 
is not the first time I have been attacked by him in a similar 
way. 

Meanwhile Tierney was writing to Grey a series of 
embittered tirades against Fox, which appear to have 
been dictated rather by a sense of personal neglect than 
by any political disagreement to which the writer could 
put a name. Tierney's attacks on Fox put an end to 

* Morning Pasty January 20, 1802. 



FOX AND THE GRENVILLES 127 

his correspondence with Grey, and injured the cordial 
relations of the two men which had begun in their 
common efforts as Friends of the People. In 1 806 the 
correspondence was resumed, and lasted on terms of 
friendship, political and personal, for more than twenty- 
years. 

Tierney and Sheridan, thus alienated from the chiefs 
of their own party, willingly listened to the overtures of 
Addington. Tierney, in May 1 803, became Addington's 
Treasurer of the Navy, and Sheridan, while refusing 
office, lent his support to the Government. Erskine 
also supported Ministers. Rational politics were dead, 
and party connections were on all sides dissolving so fast 
that at the end of 1801 Addington actually attempted 
to induce Grey and the Duke of Bedford to take office 
under him without Fox. Grey afterwards wrote to Fox, 
' My escape from the scheme of last year I think one of 
the happiest of my life ' — as indeed it was if there was 
ever any danger of his taking office without his friend 
and leader.^ And in April 1803 he writes to his wife, 
referring to this earlier transaction ; 

I have no reason to believe the Ministers would offer better 
terms than they did a year and a half ago, and I should feel myself 
compelled to insist upon a great deal more. In short, I would 
not negociate on any ground but that of having a majority in 
the Cabinet, Fox being one. 

Fox, meanwhile, was drifting towards an alliance 
not with Addington but with Addington's enemies the 
Grenvilles, and he finally carried over Grey and the 
Whig party into that connection. But so long as 
peace and war were hanging in the balance during the 

1 In February 1 802 Fox wrote to Grey, ' My reason for asking 
you the question I did [whether all negotiations with Addington were 
broken off] was not indeed anything like a suspicion — my dear Grey, 
how could such a word come from your pen ? — but because I believed 
some persons understood the thing differently.' One of these persons 
was Lady Holland — see her Journal, ii. 147. See also Y ox. Memoirs, iii. 
352-3- 



128 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

brief respite of the Peace of Amiens, union was impos- 
sible, because the Grenvilles and Windham led the war 
party, and Fox the peace party, while Pitt kept silence, 
and Addington as Minister occupied a middle position on 
the question of the inevitableness of a renewed breach 
with France. In the winter of 1802 Fox wrote to 
Grey : 

With respect to men, you know my inclination would rather 
be to the Grenvilles, as men of spirit, but the line they have taken 
with respect to war and their professed desire of reinstating Pitt 
make any junction with them impracticable for the present. 

To which Grey replied : 

I have not considered the possibility of joining the Grenvilles. 
I agree with you in preferring the men, but the line they have 
taken up puts it quite out of the question. 

* The line * taken up by the Grenvilles and their 
friends led straight to war. They denounced Buonaparte 
in season and out, and attacked Addington for his efforts 
to preserve the Peace of Amiens. Fox, meanwhile, had 
been to Paris with Mrs. Fox and the Hollands, had seen 
the First Consul, and had come back enraptured with 
the man so much dreaded by the Grenvilles. Indeed 
we find that Grey, in the very letter of December 5, 
1802, in which he objects to the Grenville party as too 
warlike, warns Fox in his turn against taking too roseate 
a view of the pacific character of Buonaparte. 

Nothing [writes Grey] lately has given me more pleasure 
than to find, after the opportunities of information which you 
have had, that you think peace may be preserved with honour. 
I confess everything I have learnt seems to me to evince a dis- 
position in the Chief Consul very unfavourable to such an opinion. 
I do not mean to contend that by any of those acts of open and 
undisguised ambition by which he has annexed new dominions 
to France, either the letter of the Treaty of Amiens is violated, 
or that the Power of that country is, in point of fact, extended. 
Italy, Switzerland, Spain and Holland, and Germany too, were 



FOX AND GREY ON BUONAPARTE 129 

all left at his mercy. But there may be a way of using power 
so threatening and so insulting as, at last, even under the most 
disadvantageous circumstances, to force resistance. And he 
appears to me to be determined to make us drink the cup of our 
disgrace to the very dregs ; to omit no opportunity of studied 
aggravation and insult, and to push us point by point till at last 
we shall be compelled to take some measure which may give 
him a pretence for the hostilities which he meditates. 

In the event of war, to which I look as too certain, which 
will then indeed be a war of destruction, what choice have we 
left but to support it ? 

I rather envy you having seen all the wonders of Paris, 
though my hatred to the Government would, I believe, even if 
I were at liberty, prevent my going there. Perhaps you will 
think this very foolish, but I certainly never felt a stronger indig- 
nation against the principles of the Coalition against France, 
than I do against those of the Consular Government. 

One sentence in Fox's reply can hardly be read 
without a smile : 

As to France, I am obstinate in my opinion that Buonaparte's 
wish is peace — nay that he is afraid of war to the last degree. 

But he then continues with more insight : 

The present object is to avoid war ; and though you agree with 
me in that, I do not know that you see the misery of war now 
quite in so strong a light as I do. Only reflect upon Ireland 
and Finance on one side, and the impossibility of hurting France 
(or to speak more properly, of diminishing her power) on the 
other. 

Indeed, if Windham and the Grenvilles had known 
that * to diminish the power ' of France we should have 
first to lead her in triumph to Vienna, Berlin and 
Moscow, they might have called for war with less 
eagerness. 

When the final breach with France came. Grey, in 
spite of his intense distrust of Buonaparte, considered, 
as Wilberforce did then and as some of the best informed 



I30 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

historians have done since,^ that Addington had mis- 
managed the final negotiations about Malta in a way 
that went far to put us apparently in the wrong when 
we were essentially in the right. In a series of letters 
to his wife he describes the great debates that ushered 
in the Napoleonic war, when the finest speeches ever 
made by Pitt and Fox, the one rousing the nation as 
only Pitt could rouse it, the other in protest against the 
crime of provoking war, were hurled across the House 
over the heads of the shuddering and incompetent 
Ministers. 

London, May 17, 1803. 

We are now actually at war, and we can only say God 
send us a safe deliverance ! which under such Ministers can 
hardly be hoped. Hawkesbury,^ in moving to have the king's 
message taken into consideration on Monday next, was abso- 
lutely convulsed with fear and could hardly articulate from the 
violence of his agitation ; and to make the thing quite ridiculous 
Addington appeared in the full dress of the Windsor Uniform, 
and strutted up the House in the midst of a burst of laughter 
just as the Speaker was reading the Medicine Act a second 
time! 

May 24. 

Pitt made one of the most inflammatory speeches that ever 
was heard, and has plunged the country into another war of ten 
years. I answered him, and under all the disadvantage of speak- 
ing to a House pre-occupied and inflamed by one of the most 
magnificent pieces of declamation that ever was made. I got 
through it, however, tant hien que mal, and ended by moving 
an amendment merely to say that we would support the war in 
which we are engaged, and holding out the hope and desire of 
Peace, My reason for moving an amendment was that I could 
not consent to the original address, which impHed an approbation 
of the endeavours of Ministers to preserve Peace and asserted 
the War to be unavoidable, without sufficient information. Fox 
is in reserve for to-day. 

^ Dropmore Papers, vii. pp. xxxii-xxxiii. 

2 Lord Hawkesbury (formerly Mr, Jenkinson, afterwards Lord 
Liverpool) was Addington 's Foreign Secretary. 



RENEWAL OF WAR, 1803 131 

House of Commons, May 25. 
Here I am again in this odious place, where I now pass 
my life. Fox's speech was the most wonderful display of wisdom 
and genius that ever was exhibited. It makes everything else 
shrink into dust. 

A few days later Fox wrote to Flolland : 

Grey and I are, if possible, still more one than ever ; indeed, 
the good humour with which he bore staying in town so long 
against his will, and his kindness in shewing his agreement with 
me upon all occasions, have made me love him more than ever. 

We were thus, without allies, at war with Napoleon. 
It was the era of the camp at Boulogne and of Nelson's 
watch off Toulon. 

In Britain is one breath ; 
We all are with you now from shore to shore, 

wrote the poet who had eyed askance the opening of 
the war of 1793. So far as the people were concerned 
there was no thought save of union against the foe. 
There were some who held with Fox that war might 
have been avoided, but all were determined to conquer 
now that war had come. We were no longer banded 
with kings to suppress a democracy, but defending our 
own island against a tyrant. The people were at one ; 
but the great politicians and the King still had small- 
minded quarrels, so that no man abler than Addington 
could be set up to lead the country in the hour of its 
worst peril and most heartfelt union. 

Lord Grenville was in many ways a narrow man ; 
he had little sympathy and no imagination for anything 
outside the governing class of his own country. But 
his patriotism, though confined and cold, was pure. He 
was not, like his brother the Marquis of Buckingham, 
for ever scheming to serve himself and his relations. 
Grenville now eagerly sought to unite Pitt and Fox and 
all the political talent of the day in a Cabinet of national 



132 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

defence. If Pitt and George III had consented, the 
thing could have been done, and it would have had a 
noble air. The politicians would have reflected the 
unity of their fellow-countrymen. But Pitt loved 
supreme power and had no wish to share it. Only on 
one occasion did he offer to share, and then, when the 
King refused to have Fox, made no serious effort to 
overcome his resistance, which gave way the moment 
Pitt was dead. It was this that brought about the 
strange political combination of the Tory Grenvilles 
with the Reforming Whigs.^ Grenville, impressed by 
the danger of the country, tried to act as a connecting 
link between his old colleague Pitt and Fox himself. 
Pitt played with and then rejected the idea, and Grenville, 
indignant with Pitt, and bound in honour to the Foxites, 
cast in his lot with the group of politicians from whom 
in principle he most differed. It was an unnatural 
alliance due to chance, and was for many years inimical 
to the healthy development of parties, but unlike the 
coalition with North it did no injury to the reputation 
of the statesmen who formed it. It was done ' all in 
honour, ultra-honourably.' 

The only great public question on which Grenville 
and the Foxite Whigs agreed was Catholic Emancipation, 
although until 1805 they do not seem to have realised 
the importance of this link. But another strong influ- 
ence was drawing the parties together. Lord Grenville 
commanded not only the Parliamentary retainers of his 
brother Buckingham, but a number of the Whig con- 
nection who had seceded with Burke and Portland. 
Burke was dead, and Portland, for all that he had been 
so unwilling to break with Fox in 1792, had since 
found complete salvation as a Tory. But Windham, 
Lord Spencer, and others still thought of themselves] 
as Whigs, and now that the heat of the anti-Jacobin | 

^ Grenville's character in all these dealings has, I think, been amply 
established by the Dropmore Papers, vol. vii. 



MOVEMENT FOR WHIG REUNION 133 

panic was over, remembered old days and felt once 
more the attraction of Fox's circle of friends. The 
chief agent in bringing about the reunion was the 
Hon. Thomas Grenville, younger brother of Lord 
Grenville and the Marquis of Buckingham, who, 
unlike the rest of his family, had been a Whig before 
the split of 1793, and had never ceased to be a denizen 
of Brooks's Club. He was a man of many friends, 
and was naturally in a position to act as mediator 
between his brothers and the two sections of the Whig 
party, with one of whom he had of recent years acted 
in politics, while socially he had never broken with 
the other. Thomas Grenville was, in particular, a 
friend of Lord Spencer, who had done Pitt yeoman's 
service as First Lord of the Admiralty ; if the alliance 
of the Grenville party with Fox and Grey did nothing 
else, at least it brought back the House of Althorp to 
the ranks of Reform. 

The first definite proposal for united action was 
made to Fox by the Grenvilles and their Whig friends 
under pressure, as we may say, from Napoleon. In the 
winter of 1803-4 the British nation became aware that 
a flotilla of 3000 craft had been collected near the camp 
of the Grand Army at Boulogne. Since the days of 
the Spanish Armada there had been no such fear in 
our island. Lord Grenville would wait no longer, but 
on the last day of the year 1803 broached to Pitt his 
scheme for * an understanding between the considerable 
persons in the country, forgetting past differences and 
uniting to rescue us from the fearful danger ' of inva- 
sion. Pitt declined to move, and Grenville thereupon 
applied to Fox. Fox at once consulted Grey, who was 
of course at Howick : 

St. Anne's Hill. Jan. 29, 1804. 

Dear Grey, — I have had a direct communication (wholly 

unsought by me) from that part of the Opposition which sits at 

the Bar end of the House to the following effect : that it is 

their wish to join with us in a systematic opposition for the purpose 



134 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

of removing the [Addington] Ministry, and substituting one on 
the broadest possible basis. Stowe ^ and all its appendages. Lord 
Spencer and Windham are the proposers. Of Carlisle and 
others we have no doubt, and Fitz William, as you know, is eager 
for such a plan. There was an openness and appearance of 
cordiality in the manner of making the proposal that much 
pleases me. 

Upon the subject of Pitt there was no reserve. It was 
stated that he, for himself, peremptorily refused entering into 
anything that could be called Opposition, and that a full explana- 
tion had taken place between Lord Grenville and him upon 
that point. The result of this explanation was, that all political 
connection between them was off. 

To this Grey replied from Howick on February 2, 
1804 : 

My dear Fox, — When I have considered that alone we can 
do little good, and have examined the different Parties with which 
it might be possible to form a junction, I have always thought 
that of the Grenvilles the most eligible. Yet now that the 
proposal comes directly from them, and it is necessary to say Aye 
or No, I doubt and fear. 

They certainly are able men : their conduct is direct and 
open ; we agree with them in opinion both as to the character 
and the measures of the present Administration ; and the over- 
ture which they have made, appears, from what you say, well 
calculated to inspire confidence 

But, on the other hand, their Opposition has appeared to 
proceed rather from personal disappointment than from public 
principle : they are extremely unpopular, and it is not till they 
have failed, first, in their endeavours to set up Pitt as the only 
man who can govern the Country, and next to gain the Country 
and inflame it in support of a War which they hoped to conduct, 
that they have recourse to us. 

I should rather approve of your second answer, expressing a 
general inclination to support ; promising it on certain occasions, 
but declining, for the reasons you give, a regular and systematic 
attendance. 

^ Stowe, the famous seat of the Marquis of Buckingham, means 
politically the Grenville family. 



ALLIANCE WITH GRENVILLES 135 

Fox accordingly replied to the Grenvilles, in the 
sense agreed to by Grey. On March 12 Fox wrote to 
Mr. William Smith, ' I will not conceal from you that 
if I had followed my own opinion entirely, I should 
have gone further.'^ 

Owing to Grey's objections, the alliance was still 
informal. But Fox's energy made it serve as well as 
the most complete fusion. Throughout April he and 
Grenville pressed Addington close in Parliament on 
national defence, Pitt aiding from his lofty isolation. 
All this while Grey stayed at .Howick, reading with 
mingled feelings Fox's joyous despatches from the 
scene of action : 

Our division last night was 107 to 128. If Pitt plays fair 
we shall probably give Addington his death blow unless he runs 
away. What I have seen of Lord Grenville confirms me in 
my opinion that he is a very direct man. 

Grey replies : 

I am glad you are so well satisfied with the conduct of the 
Grenvilles. Have you ever had any explanation with them on 
the subject of peace ? I wish the event may not exemplify the 
old fable of the Log and the Stork — 

the stork being ' Pitt's crest,' as Fox is amused to 
remember. Near the end of the month Addington 
tottered to his fall, and Fox compelled Grey to come 
to town. On the way up he writes from a wayside 
posting-house to his wife: '"Alone, unfriended, melan- 
choly, slow." Not very slow either, for I have come 
about ioo miles to-day, but as melancholy as heart 
can be. The contest does not animate me, and I 
hardly wish for success.' When he arrived in London 

^ Unpublished letter. The best and fullest account of the transac- 
tions of January-May 1804 wiU be found in the Dropmore Papers, vol. 
vii. pp. xxxviii-xli and letters in text. But the Grenville-Fox alliance 
was not 'successfully concluded' as early as January 31, as might be 
supposed from an expression used on p. xzxviii. 



136 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

he heard that Addington had resigned. The King sent 
for Pitt to form a Ministry ; and the famous transac- 
tions that then took place are nowhere better told than 
in Grey's letters home : 

May 7, 1804. 

I write from Fox's, whilst I am waiting for the result of 
Pitt's interview with the King. Lord Grenville is now with 
Fox in the room below, having come from Pitt. Perhaps it is 
very foolish to enter into any speculation when there is only a 
partition between me and certainty, and probably I shall in ten 
minutes know what has passed. But I must talk with you as 
if you were here waiting with me, and tell you my opinion that 
it will end in Pitt's coming in without any of us. 

Well! Fox is just come in, and my speculation is confirmed. 
Pitt, after pressing very strongly the necessity of a junction with 
Fox, finds the King so obstinate in refusing to admit him, that 
he is obliged to give it up. Fox is the only person objected to, 
and Pitt is now gone to Lord Grenville. 

If, by stating Fox to be the only person objected to, they 
mean that the King would accept of me or any other of Fox's 
friends, and that they have hopes of gaining us, they are, as far 
as relates to me at least, completely mistaken. No earthly con- 
sideration should make me accept Office without Fox. How 
unceasing the persecution of him is ! How honourable to him- 
self, how disgraceful in all those who submit to it ! As far 
as concerns myself, I am sorry for this, for I had really and 
unaffectedly something like a horror of Office. 

May 8. The objection being personal to him. Fox expressed 
a wish that his friends should accept, if they could be admitted 
as a party to their full share of influence and power, and rather 
more [influence and power] than if he himself formed a part of 
the arrangement. Pitt seemed inclined to discuss this proposi- 
tion in a personal interview with Fox, but I put an absolute 
veto on it, and we are all excluded. The Grenvilles have also 
refused, and have indeed behaved in the most honourable way ; 
so that Pitt must make up his Ministry out of the rump of the 
old Administration and his own immediate friends. In short, I 
believe the list I made out at Howick will be pretty near the thing. 

I saw Pitt in the House of Lords, and I think he looked very 
miserable. We have no right to impute any unfairness to him. 



CABINET CRISIS, 1804 137 

for he always avowed that he would do as he has done, but I 
would rather be any man in England than him. How much 
more exalted the situation Fox occupies ! 

These events achieved for Fox the fusion he desired 
of his own followers with the Grenvilles and their Whig 
adherents. The gallant refusal of those statesmen to 
take office with their former chief Pitt so long as Fox 
was left out, silenced all objectors against them in Fox's 
circle, and Grey, who of all things admired personal 
loyalty in political dealings, ceased to be a critic of the 
Grenvilles. 

The new alliance for awhile had as its journalistic 
fugleman no less a person than Cobbett, a rising power 
in the land, now in the passage between his former 
Tory and his later Radical position. Equally unstable, 
but more important so long as it lasted, was the 
patronage of the party by the Prince of Wales, which 
rendered it liable to come into power any day, if the 
physicians pronounced the King mad. Stories, some 
true and some false, of the eccentric behaviour of the 
monarch who had ostracised Fox were current coin 
at Brooks's. In May 1804, the week after Pitt had 
formed his last Ministry out of those who were ready to 
submit to the Royal caprice. Grey writes to his wife : 
' One story is that, upon being stopped by some embarras 
in Bond Street, the King put his head out of the chaise 
window, and cried: "Hot Buns ! "' And a few days 
later he writes : 

I don't know how Pitt feels, but I should be miserable in 
his place. The uncertainty of the King's remaining even as he 
is, and the embarrassment to which Pitt must be daily exposed by 
his extravagance, must make the task of government a dreadful 
one. He looks pale and ill. 

Pitt had indeed too many reasons to look * pale and 
ill.' The King's periodic fits of lunacy, which it was 
impossible entirely to deny even in public, were one 
part of his trouble. Then there was the gout of which 



138 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Pitt himself was dying. The awful burden of public 
care, with the Grand Army on the cliff thirty miles 
away, pressed to the ground an invalid who had to bear 
it all alone ; the only real colleague in his cabinet, 
Dundas, was removed for awhile from public life on a 
charge of financial impropriety, driven home by Wilber- 
force himself. Pitt was reduced so low that even the 
resignation of the Addingtonians out of the Ministry 
was a serious matter for him. The Opposition were 
strong in divisions and far superior to Government in 
debating talent. 

God knows [wrote Grey to his wife] Pitt has as many things 
to embarrass him as his worst enemies could wish. Before the 
debate began last night his countenance exhibited strong marks 
of care and vexation and afterwards of rage and disappointment. 
Fox spoke admirably. 

In May 1805 the cause of Catholic Emancipation 
was brought up in both Houses by the Opposition, 
when Grattan's exiled eloquence first enthralled the 
British Parliament. 

The Irish delegates [wrote Fox to Lauderdale] have been 
peremptorily refused by Pitt, and now come to us. I like this 
very much, and cannot help thinking that Lord Grenville and 
myself bringing the thing forward is the best possible thing both 
for the country and ourselves. 

Fox's notion of the * best thing ' for a party would not 
have appealed to Taper and Tadpole, for the espousal 
of the Catholic cause, now deserted by Pitt, was a sure 
road away from popularity and from office. It was 
significant that the Prince of Wales' members voted 
against the Catholics ; the body of the Whig party had 
doubted the wisdom of taking up so thankless a task, 
but were overborne by the generous firmness of Fox, 
Grenville, and Grey. 

The curtain was now ringing up on the great middle 



PITT, NELSON, NAPOLEON 139 

act of the Napoleonic drama — the first scene being a 
cantata of picturesque Chouan brigands. The vendetta 
between the Bourbons and the Corsican who reigned 
in their stead culminated in the Chouan plot against his 
life, responded to by his fierce vengeance wreaked on 
the innocent Due d'Enghien. These events roused 
a passion of devotion to him in the people of France, 
and of loathing for him in the Courts of Europe. And 
his own nature seemed to have drunk the poison. For- 
getful of his earlier ideals, as armed defender of the bene- 
fits of the revolution in Western Europe, as legislator 
and healer of ruined France, he gave himself up wholly 
to the lust of power and conquest, the rattle of artillery 
along all the roads of Europe, and the glitter of the 
Byzantine ceremonies of a Court. 

Thou mightest have built thy throne 
Where it had stood even now ; thou didst prefer 
A frail and bloody pomp which Time hath swept 
In fragments towards oblivion. 

He crowned himself Emperor in Notre Dame, the Pope 
attending. But with what new trophies should he cele- 
brate his Empire, as he had celebrated his Consulship 
with Marengo ? As if to give him the opportunity he 
desired, the Third Coalition rose up against him to be 
destroyed. 

Nelson, hot on the traces of trembling Villeneuve 
in and out of the West Indian Archipelago, and Calder 
waiting for him in the fog, had rendered the camp 
at Boulogne an idle spectacle, a sword nailed fast 
in its sheath. The Third Coalition saved Napoleon 
from acknowledging failure. In September 1805 he 
rushed across Europe with the Grand Army, lately * of 
England,' now * of the Danube.' 

Pitt had agreed to pay £11 los. z. year for every man 
put into the field by Austria, by Russia, and by Prussia 
if she too would join. How far the Coalition was the 
outcome of these subsidies, how far of Napoleon's 



I40 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

deliberate provocations, how far of the Czar Alexander's 
ambitions — and whether Pitt was wise or foolish to 
call in the great military powers to help Nelson — are 
subjects on which historians differ still, as politicians 
differed then.^ Pitt's policy was certainly a failure, but 
whether any other course would have turned out any 
better is a matter of mere speculation. 

Fox at any rate maintained, before the event proved 
him right, that Pitt's proceedings would lay eastern 
Europe at the feet of Napoleon. The Grenvilles, on 
the other hand, believed in the old policy of their former 
chief, and looked for victory from the subsidies and the 
Coalition. On September 22 Grey wrote to Fox : 

The best use that can be made of the Alliance would be to 
negociatey but this, I suppose, our Ministers are not likely to do, 
and we shall have to regret again, perhaps, when its strength 
is broken, that we did not take advantage of it when in a situation 
to inspire some fear. 

At that moment it would have been as easy to 
* negociate ' with a cannon-ball flying towards its mark. 
The Grand Army was half-way between Boulogne and 
the Danube. 

In October Mack surrendered at Ulm, but Nelson 
triumphed at Trafalgar. In December Austria and 
Russia were laid low at Austerlitz. Napoleon was 
master not merely of western but of central and south- 
eastern Europe. 

On January 3, 1 806, Fox wrote to Thomas Grenville : 

Perhaps you are now convinced that there might be some- 
thing worse than even a rickety peace. However, I will not 
triumph too much on my foresight. The more a man feels the 
desirableness of lowering the power of France, the more indigna- 
tion ought he to feel against those who have so enormously 
aggrandized her. 

^ Mr. Holland Rose gives the case for Pitt ; Mr. Fitzpatrick (in 
the Dropmore Papers, vii. pp. Iv-lxxiii) the case against him, both writing 
dispassionately and on fullest knowledge. 



'THE AUSTERLITZ LOOK' 141 

Fox, however, was able to come to an agreement 
with the Grenvilles, Windham, and Spencer on the 
understanding that, much as he condemned the origin 
and the conduct of the war, England must now pursue 
it with vigour, and keep all engagements with her allies. 
On January 14, 1 806, he wrote to Grey, * Tom Grenville 
came yesterday and I think things look well for an agree- 
ment. Pitt is, I believe, still very ill, and I doubt much 
whether he will appear the first day.' There was there- 
fore the prospect that when Parliament met the followers 
of Fox, Grenville, and Addington, now Lord Sidmouth, 
would together fall upon Pitt on the ground of his 
proved failure to conduct the affairs of the country in 
the political isolation which he loved and to which the 
King's prejudices against Fox had consigned him. 

If Pitt had returned from Bath to meet these charges, 
it would have taxed his genius to answer them with 
Napoleon in Vienna. He took the best way of defend- 
ing his reputation. He died, and left those who blamed 
him for Austerlitz to lead the country on to Jena. 



CHAPTER II 

THE MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS FEBRUARY 1 8o6 

TO MARCH 1807 THE DEATH OF FOX 

' And many thousands now are sad — 
Wait the fulfilment of their fear ; 
For he must die who is their stay, 
Their glory disappear.' 

Wordsworth on the death of Fox. 

On the death of Pitt the King was helpless in Lord 
Grenville's honest hands, and was therefore compelled 
to employ Fox. So there came into being the Ministry 
of All the Talents — to give it the less homely of its 
nicknames. It was composed of two sorts of Tories 
and two sorts of Whigs : the Foxite Whigs ; the 
Grenvillites, Whig and Tory ; and the Addingtonian 
Tories. The last-named could scarcely claim to add 
to the talents of the Ministry, but they served to give 
it a broader bottom, and so left its enemy the King 
no immediate chance of sending for a different set of 
servants. They ' stopped up all the earths,* as Fox 
laughing said, referring not to himself as the fox. 

There was no question of passing Parliamentary 
Reform, to which not only the King and the Opposition 
but all sections of Ministerialists except the Foxites 
were alike opposed. Catholic Emancipation was 
eschewed by the ministerial followers of Addington, 
now Lord Sidmouth, not to mention the King and 
the majority of both Houses. Although Parliamentary 
emancipation was thus rendered impossible, Fox, 
Grenville, and Grey were determined, short of that, to 

142 



MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS 143 

do something for the Irish Catholics, but they made the 
error of not coming to an understanding on the subject 
with their Royal captive before consenting to take office. 

There was, however, one great reform, hated by 
George III like all other great reforms, which they 
found themselves able to accomplish. Since the new 
Ministers were ' very direct men,' they passed the 
Abolition of the Slave Trade which Pitt had for so many 
years alternately supported and betrayed. They could 
not even attempt to reform England ; they tried to 
give peace to Europe, and failed ; they fell the moment 
they touched Ireland ; but they stayed the plague in 
Africa. That one Act renders All the Talents a bright 
spot in a dark period. In the middle of the greatest 
reaction in our history, when only retrograde measures 
were added to the Statute Book, these men, who 
held office for but one year, secured a measure which 
would have been a noble year's harvest for any Ministry 
in a reforming age. 

They passed one other reform, Windham's Army 
Act, an attempt, by substituting limited for life service, 
to scramble out of the existing chaos of military organisa- 
tion. The King and his son, the Duke of York, the 
Commander-in-Chief, opposed it bitterly, it was not 
popular in the country, and Windham himself was 
generally disliked. But, as over the slave trade, Fox 
insisted that the Bill should be passed. Unlike Pitt, 
he showed himself ready to risk the fall of the Govern- 
ment rather than leave undone that which he thought 
right and was pledged in honour to perform. 

The Cabinet had been patched together out of 
parties recently at deadly feud, yet nothing is more 
remarkable in its inner history than the good behaviour 
of these parties to one another. For example, Windham, 
who was brought in as a Grenvillite, was far better 
treated by Fox and Grey than by the Grenvilles them- 
selves. It was Fox who insisted that the Cabinet 
should stand by him over the Army Bill ; and after 



144 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Fox's death it was Grey who successfully protested 
against Windham being superseded at the War Office 
to make room for Thomas Grenville, in accordance 
with the Marquis of Buckingham's ideas of what was 
due to his family. Grey even offered to resign his 
own office to smooth out the difficulty. 

Both at the first formation of the Ministry in 
February 1 806, and again at the reshuffling in September 
after Fox's death, nothing but loyalty and generosity 
between the various sections could have enabled a Govern- 
ment to be formed at all. In a Ministry of All the 
Talents there are, in the nature of the case, more men 
with good claims on office than there are places to satisfy 
them. In February Whitbread, Tierney, Lauderdale, 
and Philip Francis were not given office at all, while 
even Sheridan and Thomas Grenville were not in the 
Cabinet.^ It has been recorded by Holland that Grey 

* The chief offices were filled as follows : 





February 1806. 


September 1806. 


First Lord of Treasury 


Lord Grenville 


Lord Grenville. 


Admiralty 


Grey 


Thomas Grenville. 


Chancellor of Exchequer 


Lord Henry Petty 
(afterwards 3rd 
Marquis Lans- 
downe) 


Lord Henry Petty. 


Sec. of Foreign Affairs 


Fox 


Lord Howick (Grey) 


War and Colonies . 


Windham 


Windham. 


Home Dept. 


Lord Spencer 


Lord Spencer. 


Lord Chancellor . 


Lord Erskine 


Lord Erskine. 


Lord Chief Justice 


Lord Ellenborough 


Lord Ellenborough. 


Lord Privy Seal 


Lord Sidmouth 
(Addington) 


Lord Holland. 


President of the Council 


Lord Fitzwilliam 


Lord Sidmouth. 


President of Board of 






Trade 


Lord Auckland 


Lord Auckland. 


Master of the Ordnance 


Lord Moira 


Lord Moira. 


The above formed the 


Cabinet. 




Lord-Lieut, of Ireland 


Duke of Bedford 


Duke of Bedford. 


Board of Control . 


Thomas Grenville 


Tierney. 


Treasurer of Navy 


Sheridan 


Sheridan. 


Secretary at War 


Gen. Fitz pa trick 


Gen. Fitzpatrick , 


Chancellor of Ireland 


Geo. Ponsonby 


Geo. Ponsonby. 



GREY AND WHITBREAD 145 

did a bad turn to his old school and college friend and 
brother-in-law, Samuel Whitbread, by too hastily mis- 
informing Fox and Grenville that Sam did not want 
office. If Grey ever said so, at least he had some 
excuse. On February 7 he writes to Whitbread : ' I 
certainly had remained ever since our last conversation 
on this subject under the impression that you felt a great 
unwillingness to any office.' But if Grey made this 
original error, he afterwards did all he properly could 
to retrieve it. His long letters to Whitbread show 
that he behaved all through this affair with affection 
and consideration, though he did not, like the Duke 
of Buckingham, hold a pistol to his colleagues' heads 
if his family was not catered for to his satisfaction. 
Nevertheless, Whitbread's discontent with his party 
dates from this period. He was angry with his friends 
on personal grounds for their not giving him office, and 
on public grounds for their failure to make peace with 
Napoleon. After they had gone back to opposition he 
was justly indignant at their neglect to support strongly 
his demands for popular education and social reform. 
In the last ten years of his life, which ended so tragically 
in 1 8 1 5, Whitbread was often a cause of grief to Grey, 
who loved his brother-in-law better perhaps than he 
understood him. 

Grey himself was First Lord of the Admiralty, a 
position which he filled without reproach from February 
to September 1806. The work of the department, 
reckoned in time of war the hardest of any Cabinet post, 
kept him somewhat aloof from general politics until Fox's 
death ; his labours at the Admiralty were sweetened 
for him by close official connection with the famous 
sailor. Lord St. Vincent, who happened to be a personal 
and political friend.^ 

From April 1806 till November 1807 Grey was 
known to the world by the title of Lord Ho wick. In 

^ In July 1806 Lord St. Vincent writes to Grey: 'I hope that 
among you a Black Eye will be given at the ensuing General Election to 
some of the pitiful opposers.' 



146 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

1801 Addington had conferred a peerage on his father, 
General Sir Charles Grey. It was no more than the 
Generars due for good service, formerly in the war of 
the American Revolution and latterly in the West Indies 
against the French Republicans. Indeed, his father's 
elevation had been hanging over Grey's head for many 
years before the blow fell.^ He regarded it as a grave 
misfortune that set a term to his own career in the 
Commons, and destined him at the height of his powers 
and authority to pine in the limbo of the Lords. Indeed, 
it proved the chief misfortune of his life, and a heavy 
handicap to the party after Fox's death. Fox and his 
friends had commiserated Grey on his father's peerage 
in 1 801, but since the mischief was done, and nothing 
could now save him from sitting among the Lords in 
nature's unswerving course, they raised his father 
from Baron to Earl in April 1806, on the principle that 
one may as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. Grey 
thereby became Lord Howick, though still a commoner, 
until his father's death. 

The life of the administration was derived from 
Fox's popularity and his power of genial management, 
exerted in the Cabinet equally over old friends and old 
foes, and not unfelt even in the highest and most hostile 
quarter. The bane of the administration was Fox's 
ill-health, which showed itself almost at once. 

Lord Howick (Grey) [writes Holland] came to him with a 
proposal which included a Peerage, if he liked it, to save him 
from the yet more laborious duty of the House of Commons. 
Mrs. Fox was in the room when this suggestion was made. At 
the mention of the Peerage, he looked at her significantly, with a 
reference to his secret but early determination never to be created 
a Peer ; and after a short pause he said, ' No, not yet, I think, 

^ In Brooks's betting-book, June 5, 1794, we read : ' Col. Tarleton 
bets Mr. Grey five gs. that Sir Chas. Grey is created an English 
peer on or before the 4th June next.' 




General SiR Charles Grey, of Fallodon, afterwards first 
Earl Grey ; 1729-1807 ; father of the Prime Minister. 



From the picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence {1795) at Hawick. 



FOX AND NAPOLEON 147 

not yet.' On tlic sanric evening, as I sat by his bcdsidf:, he said 
to me, ' The Slave '1 rade and Peace are two such gKjrious thitigs. 
I can't give them up, even to you. If I can niaiutge them, I 
will then retire.' 

One of these * glorious things * he did achieve, leav- 
ing the Slave Trade Abolition Bill in such train when 
he died that Grey and Grcnville put it through both 
Houses just before the King could dismiss the Ministry. 
iiut he was less fortunate about peace, not through any 
fault of his own. His tenure of the Foricgn Office has 
been singularly little attacked, and the more it is studied 
in detail the more admirable it appears. In principle 
and in method he shows himself a * Briton ' indeed, 
as Scott said, but a Briton tactful and sympathetic with 
foreign Courts and peoples, as well as firm for the interests 
of his own country and loyal to her allies. 

If half as much could have been said of the ruler 
of France we should then and there have had peace. 
Napoleon at first offered to negociate with Fox on the 
basis of restoring Hanover to King George, leaving 
the Cape and Malta to us, and Sicily to our Bourbon 
ally. In other words, he suggested the principle of uti 
possidetis^ each side to keep what it then held, except 
only that Hanover was to be restored. Negociations 
began on this basis, but then Napoleon changed his 
mind, inveighed against uti possidetis as des jormules 
latines^ and laid claim to Sicily for his brother Joseph, 
then King of Naples. It was a terrible disillusionment 
for Fox, who had clung so long to the roseate view of 
Napoleon ; but he was man enough to read on the page 
of facts that he had been mistaken, and at once to accept 
the consequences. Nothing could be better than his 
words to Lord Holland : 

Bad as the [Bourbon] Queen and Court of Naples are, wc 
can, in honour, do nothing without their full and bona fide con- 
sent ; but even exclusive of that consideration, and of the great 
importance of Sicily, which you, young one, very much under- 



148 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

rate, it is not so much the value of the point in dispute as the 
manner in which the French fly from their word, that dis- 
heartens me. 

The revival of the claim on Sicily was specially pre- 
posterous because, after the negociations had been 
begun, we had further secured our position there and 
defeated the French preparations to invade the island 
from Reggio, by the victory of Maida on the Calabrian 
coast. That brilliant little action, on July 4, 1806, 
heralded the victories of the Peninsula by demonstrating 
the superiority of the English line over the French 
column. To use a language familiar to the statesmen 
of that time, Maida was to our land warfare the lucky 
day qui primus alma risit adorea^ putting an end to the 
unjust contempt in which our army had long been held. 

In September 1806, at the height of the crisis that 
should decide whether Napoleon would after all choose 
peace or war, and whether Prussia would join Russia 
and England or continue as the vassal of France, Charles 
Fox was taken from those who loved him. His last words 
were that he ' died happy.' And, in spite of all, he had 
lived happy and spread happiness around him like a 
wind blowing from the hills. He had loved life too 
well to be a perfect statesman, but he had brought 
human life and love with him into the political world, 
and since he passed out of it, though it has been dignified 
by equal genius and higher virtue, it has never again 
been made Shakespearian by such a kind, grand, human 
creature. The last fifteen years of his life, though 
apparently the most complete in their failure, were in 
fact the best, the greatest, and in the end the most useful : 
he stood up for liberty in evil days, when without such 
a Titan to bestride them the friends of liberty would have 
ceased to exist in Parliament, and in the country would 
have lost all hope for the future. His death, as 
Wordsworth felt upon ' the lonely road ' above Grasmere, 
was the last blow to * many thousands * of humble men, 



DEATH OF FOX 149 

now left without his shield to the mercy of intolerant 
enemies. They had indeed a hard, long time before 
them. But Fox had left his disciples in high places as 
well as low, and Holland, whose proud epitaph on him- 
self was that he was ' nephew of Fox and friend of Grey,* 
lived to see his friend reform the Government of Britain 
according to the maxims of his uncle. 

Grey stepped into the three positions vacated by the 
death of Fox : the Foreign Office, the leadership of 
the House of Commons, and the leadership of the Whig 
party. The first two of these posts he held for six 
months, and never again ; but the less official leader- 
ship of the party, not dependent on the breath of kings, 
he held until his retirement in 1834. There were 
indeed occasions on which he wrote in private letters 
that he regarded himself as having retired, but nobody 
marked him, and, except perhaps for the few months 
of Canning's Ministry in 1827, he was always held, 
to use Byron's phrase, as * the Capo Politico of the 
remaining Whigs.' ^ 

In the Cabinet Lord Grenville was officially his 
chief, but politically they were on equal terms, the two 
Consuls of the Coalition. In order that Grey should 
have time to lead the House of Commons, he was moved 
from the Admiralty to the Foreign Office, where the 
work, if yet more responsible, was in those days lighter. 
Since Grenville had for so long been Pitt's Foreign 
Minister, he naturally exercised great influence over 
Grey during his first and only six months at that 
Office. The somewhat lofty and unsympathetic tone 
towards Foreign Powers that we catch in Grey's 
despatches has in it more of Grenville than of Fox. 
If, on the one hand, Grey can be accused of no com- 
plaisance to Napoleon, on the other he showed a certain 
stiffness towards Prussia and Russia. In this he was 

^ Byron's Journal, Jan, 15, 1821. 



ISO LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

encouraged by the King, whose fixed idea seems to have 
been to get Hanover guaranteed to him, while Europe 
was burning. In the important matter of subsidies 
the Grenville-Grey poHcy was the very opposite of the 
old Pitt-Grenville methods. Instead of lavishing the 
British tax-payers' millions on foreign armies, the new 
Government even refused to help Russia in the matter 
of a city loan.^ Pitt's subsidy system, always denounced 
by the Whigs as extravagant, had come to such dire 
mishap at Austerlitz that the reaction against it was for 
a time carried perhaps too far, Grenville himself leading. 
During Grey's first fortnight at the Foreign Office, 
the negotiations with France, which had come to grief 
before Fox died, were officially broken off, in spite of 
Talleyrand's efforts to keep our envoy. Lord Lauderdale, 
in Paris until Napoleon's plans with regard to Prussia 
were matured. In a letter to Whitbread, who thought 
that peace should have been made. Grey writes : 

I do not see how it was possible for Lauderdale to show a 
greater disposition for Peace. It was necessary to bring back 
the French to the offer [of Sicily] by which they had induced us 
to enter into the negociation, and the whole time he was at Paris 
he was engaged in an ineffectual struggle for that purpose. You 
know poor Fox's anxiety for Peace — an anxiety certainly not 
lessened by the situation in which he was during the negociation. 
He certainly approved of Lauderdale's conduct, and thought that 
the French Government had left him no choice. The last 
time he spoke of the negociation was on the Sunday before he 
died. He then said the great points for this country to adhere 
to were : (i) Sicily ; (2) The Russian connection, and on these 
the negociations broke off. 

Grey's first despatch as Foreign Secretary, written 
on September 24, 1806, gave instructions to Lord 

1 Dropmore Papers, viii. p. xlv. The views here expressed of 
Granville's and Grey's foreign policy, 1 806-1 807, are largely those 
of Mr. Walter Fitzpatrick, confirmed by my own study of the T.O. 
Papers in the Record Office. 



GREY AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE 151 

Morpeth, whom he sent as special envoy to Prussia. 
We were then in a state of war with that country on the 
subject of Hanover, the fatal gift with which Napoleon 
had bribed the irresolute Court of Berlin, in order the 
more surely to embroil it with England. But the Prussian 
people and army were clamorous for war with France, and 
the Court showed signs of yielding to the cry. Grey 
instructed Morpeth to seek peace and alliance with 
Prussia, on the basis of Hanover being guaranteed to 
his Britannic Majesty at the end of the war. Hanover 
was the sine qua non. 

If the Prussian Government should make a demand of Sub- 
sidies, you will not fail to observe [writes Grey] that His Majesty, 
having supported the great pressure of the contest against France 
during so many years in which Prussia has been at peace, has 
a right to expect that His Prussian Majesty should avail himself 
to the utmost of the Resources of his own dominions before he 
can justly call upon His Majesty for pecuniary assistance. 

With these instructions in his pocket Morpeth landed 
at Hamburg and began to post up country, only to be 
met by the tide of flight from Jena, which fairly swept 
him back to the coast. Prussia had not waited for peace 
or alliance with England, but had plunged to her fate 
and met it with a rapidity unsurpassed in the history of 
war. The disaster cannot therefore be attributed to the 
English Ministers, and Grey was in his rights when 
he wrote on October 28, 'His Majesty by no means 
wishes to take upon himself the responsibility of influenc- 
ing the decision of Prussia,' whether or not to continue 
the war ; since * he was no party to the measures in 
which the war originated.' 

We managed, however, to keep Russia and the 
wrecks of Prussia in the field, although our diplomacy 
was not accommodating to these allies, either in the 
matter of subsidies or upon Hanover. We were still 
most insistent to have that country guaranteed to King 
George, though it was now buried deep in the territories 



152 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

occupied by Napoleon. On the other hand, we accom- 
modated Russia by sending our fleet up the Dardanelles 
to prevent the Turks from moving against her at 
the instigation of France. The Admiral mismanaged 
the operation, and the expedition failed to overawe the 
Porte. 

We were at war with Spain and Holland, vassals of 
Napoleon. A few weeks before Pitt died. Admiral 
Sir Home Popham and General Sir David Baird had 
captured the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch. 
Popham borrowed a battalion from Baird, sailed across 
the Atlantic without instructions from home, and in 
June 1806 captured Buenos Ayres from the Spaniards, 
as a little present to the Empire on his own behalf. The 
news touched the covetous imagination of our merchants, 
who clamoured for the reversion of the Spanish colonies, 
their trade and wealth. The Government yielded to 
this foolish cry, having yet to learn, like Napoleon, that 
Spaniards, whether pure blood or half breed, are stubborn 
to defend their country against the invasion of more pro- 
gressive races. Grey, almost alone among his colleagues, 
had the good sense to oppose these projects of South 
American and Mexican conquest. In a minute addressed 
to the Cabinet he protests against reinforcing Buenos 
Ayres, or any further undertakings across the Atlantic. 
He argues that our European allies will think us indifferent 
to the common cause and bent only on the private plunder 
of the globe ; that such distant expeditions will dis- 
sipate our small forces, which should be kept in hand, 
ready to defend Ireland or to be thrust into any casual 
opening in the barrier of Napoleon's Continental power. 
Events proved Grey right. General Whitelock, sent 
with an expeditionary force to Buenos Ayres, was defeated 
by the inhabitants risen to defend their country ; and 
the army that was fitted out for Mexico under Sir Arthur 
Wellesley was happily stopped in time, in order to be 
sent first to Copenhagen and afterwards to the Peninsula, 
where the Spanish rising against Napoleon gave it better 



THE PRINCE AND THE MINISTERS 153 

use in the Old World than it could possibly have found 
in the New. 

The last thing of which All the Talents could be 
accused was servility towards the Prince of Wales. For 
years past Fox had been somewhat, and Grey altogether, 
estranged from the Prince, with whom they had once 
been familiar friends. And the proud Grenville was at 
no time either a courtier or a boon companion. Indeed, 
Holland himself, a man most loath to * crook the preg- 
nant hinges of the knee,' complained that the party 
interests were compromised by the personal neglect of the 
Heir Apparent practised by his father's Ministers. On 
Fox's death Holland managed to persuade Grey to write 
to the Prince a friendly but dignified letter, expressing 
a hope that the Prince would still ' support those honour- 
able principles which united so many friends around 
Mr. Fox.' The Prince replied on September 18, in 
his flamboyant and protesting style, sincere enough it 
may be at the moment of writing : 

As to ourselves, my Friend, the old and steady adherents and 
Friends of Fox, we have but one line to pursue, one course to 
steer ; to stick together, to remain united, and to prove by our 
conduct, in our steady adherence to those principles which we 
imbibed from Fox when living, that we are not unworthy of him, 
and that his Memory will forever live in our Hearts. 

It is a little difficult to know what * principles ' are 
referred to by the Prince, who had already abandoned 
Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform. Grey 
remained undeceived, and drew no nearer to Carlton 
House. In that establishment the influence now pre- 
vailing was that of Lady Hertford and her son. Lord 
Yarmouth, a nobleman of infamous character, who 
achieved dual immortality as the original of Lord Mon- 
mouth in ' Coningsby ' and of Lord Steyne in ' Vanity 
Fair.' Representations were made to Grey by many 
of his supporters that he should court the Prince, with 



154 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

an eye on favours to come. But he writes to George 
Ponsonby on April 24, 1807 : 

If the Prince could be kept steady by any reasonable sacrifices 
I should concur in the propriety of making them. But the 
truth is he is completely influenced by Lady Hertford and Lord 
Yarmouth, and is also ready to do anything to obtain such an 
arrangement as he wants respecting the Princess [viz., to divorce 
his second wife, Caroline of Brunswick]. These are the true 
causes of his conduct towards us, which he must seek to justify 
in some way or other, and his complaint of our inattention is 
merely a pretence. 

So Grey deliberately kept aloof from Carlton House, 
both during and after the Ministry of All the Talents, 
and thereby contributed greatly to the Whig exclusion 
from ofBce when the Prince actually became Regent. 
In May 1808 Grey writes to Holland : 

I am much obliged to the Prince for his expressions of civility 
about me, but it is impossible that I should ever be in favor 
with him. I do not mean that this is impossible from anything 
that has formerly passed between us, for I believe he has in a 
very great degree the good quality of forgetting resentments 
which most Princes would cherish. But I am in every way 
unsuited to him, and still more unsuited to those who are always 
about him, and by whom it is his misfortune to be influenced. 
I wish the Prince had a little more feeling of what is due to the 
dignity of his own situation, for it must be confessed that the 
persons who surround him very materially contribute to diminish 
the respect of the public for him now, and afford a very melan- 
choly prospect of the influence under which the Government 
is hereafter to be conducted. 

It was during the Ministry of All the Talents that 
the Prince began to demand a divorce from one of his 
two wives, Caroline of Brunswick. A committee of the 
Cabinet, not including Grey, held the * Delicate Investiga- 
tion ' into the charges against her. They drew up a 
report censuring her for levity, but acquitting her of the 



THE CATHOLIC QUESTION 155 

serious charge. They certainly cannot be accused of 
truckling to the Prince in this matter, as the Tories did 
in 1 820. As yet the Tories posed for popular champions 
of the Princess ; but when her husband became King and 
they his too obsequious servants, they themselves per- 
secuted Caroline in a way the Whigs had refused to do. 
Grey never altered his attitude about the Princess : both 
in 1806 and in 1820 he held that she was a light and 
vulgar woman, not to be made into a heroine, and that 
the charges against her were matters of evidence not to 
be approached in a party spirit. The Delicate Investiga- 
tion, he wrote to Holland, * is without any comparison 
the most disagreeable of any in which any Government 
was ever engaged. It cannot end well for us in any way.' 
The Ministry of All the Talents might have con- 
tinued in office, not indeed to pass reforms, but to carry 
on the war, had there not been one question, the pacifica- 
tion of Ireland, which partook of the character of for- 
bidden reform, and yet in the Whig view was essential 
as a war measure. * The advantage of carrying this 
great question,' wrote Grey to Holland, * depends very 
much on its being carried in time ; and I cannot help 
fearing that the overwhelming torrent of Buonaparte's 
power will come upon us before we have raised the dams 
and mounds that are necessary to risk it.' Grey is here 
writing of the full measure of Catholic Emancipation, 
but since that was known to be impossible for a Govern- 
ment that included Sidmouth and his followers, they 
had to consider what smaller concession would on 
the one hand be granted by the Houses and by the 
King, and on the other suffice to stave off awhile the 
growing impatience of the Irish. Unless the Ministry 
proposed something at once, the Catholics threatened 
to bring up in Parliament their demand for full eman- 
cipation, which would split the Ministry and cause 
its downfall. Grey therefore, on January 10, 1807, 
wrote to George Ponsonby, now Lord Chancellor of 
Ireland : 



156 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

If anything can be done for the Catholics, would it not be 
better to open the Army to them, by giving them the same 
privilege of serving and advancing in rank in every part of the 
King's dominions that they now have in Ireland. The strange 
anomaly of a person being enabled to rise to all except the highest 
ranks in the profession in Ireland, and being subject, if the Regi- 
ment in which he serves should be removed to England, to severe 
penalties, cannot be defended in argument. 

It could, however, be defended in practice. George III 
treated it as if it was the Palladium of the Constitution. 
When this infinitesimal reform was proposed by his 
Ministers they understood him to consent to its intro- 
duction ; but after they had introduced it he turned 
round upon them and said he would have none of it. 
The Cabinet, in great distress, decided by a majority 
to withdraw the Bill. But the new Duke of Bedford, 
their Lord-Lieutenant, wrote from Ireland on March 16, 
1807, to tell Grey that he disagreed with the withdrawal 
of the Bill 'to which the honour and good faith of 
the Government was unquestionably pledged.' Grey 
replied on the 19th : 

My feelings and opinions were the same as your's, and I 
never was called upon to make so painful a sacrifice of both, as 
in agreeing to withdraw the Bill which I had introduced. This 
sacrifice, however, I had brought myself to make in deference 
to the opinion of my Colleagues, of a great majority of our friends 
in Parliament and, as I believed, of the Public in general. The 
consideration, however, which weighed most with me was the 
state of Ireland, and the danger of adding to al(l the bad efFects 
of so severe a disappointment of the Catholics, the calamity of 
establishing a government there founded on principles of exclu- 
sion. The evil of this was strongly urged by Grattan, and his 
opinion against our resignation was earnestly pressed. 

But King George was not to be cheated of their resig- 
nations. As they consented to withdraw the Bill, he 
demanded a promise similar to that which he had 
extracted from Pitt about Catholic Emancipation, that 



FALL OF 'ALL THE TALENTS' 157 

they would never trouble him in the matter again. The 
Ministry, unable to endure the humiliating bondage 
of such a pledge, resigned. 

You may imagine [continues Grey in the same letter] the 
relief I have found in the conclusion of the business by the King's 
requiring us to withdraw the reserve we had made of entire 
freedom in the advice we might hereafter find it necessary to 
give respecting Ireland. This left us no alternative. The 
Government is at an end. The assurance we have been required 
to give was never before required of any Ministers, and could 
not be honestly complied with. I confess that I still think that 
our case would have been plainer and clearer, if we had stood on 
our first ground. Lord Spencer was determined to resign even 
if the King had not clogged our concession with any further 
condition, and this determination must have prevented our con- 
tinuance in ofiice. 

So fell All the Talents. Holland has depicted an 
amusing scene in one of these last Cabinets, between 
Grey and Lord Chancellor Erskine, the hero of the 
treason trials of 1794, who rivalled his successor 
Brougham in eccentricity and untrustworthiness as well 
as in genius and public service: 

Our Chancellor, Lord Erskine, shone least upon this trying 
occasion. He talked much nonsense and false religion, and 
declaimed against Papists. When the moment of decision 
approached, he played with pencils and pens, took up books, 
and pretended even to sleep with the hope of not being com- 
mitted in any resolution we might adopt. Lord Howick [Grey] 
or myself jogged his elbow and drew his attention to the matter 
in discussion. He confessed afterwards with a droll simplicity 
that he had been strangely aff^ected by the book he had looked 
into. It happened to be the ' Life of Egerton Lord Ellesmere,' 
who had received the seals at the same age as himself (fifty-seven), 
and had held them no less than twenty-seven years. The con- 
trast of his own prospects and the fate of his more fortunate 
predecessor had overwhelmed him ; and no Papist ever called 
down the vengeance of heaven on an heretick with more fervour 
and fury than Lord Erskine at that moment damned the Holy 



158 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Catholic Church and all who maintained its tenets. Lord 
Howick was indignant at conduct so uncongenial with his own 
generous temper and elevated mind. The chagrin which Lord 
Erskine would manifestly feel at the loss of office seemed to 
reconcile Lord Howick to the event ; and every hint dropped 
by the other on the propriety of a temporizing policy, made him 
spurn more contemptuously at everything like compliance or 
submission. 

The Ministry had lived just long enough to perform 
its most important service to the Empire and to mankind. 
Fox had been determined to abolish the slave trade, and 
had been finely supported by Grenville and Grey. The 
Bill could not be a Government measure officially, 
because Windham was opposed to it, but it had in 
effect the full support of Government. Fox, on his 
death-bed, had urged his colleagues to finish the work 
he had set in train. On the decisive evening in the 
Commons, February 23, 1807, Grey made the prin- 
cipal speech, declaring that the measure was more 
near his heart than any that had been brought forward 
since he entered Parliament, and expressing a hope that 
the abolition of the slave trade would lead to the 
gradual emancipation of all slaves. Owing to the 
strong support of the Ministers, and to the sudden 
revival of abolitionist agitation in the country which 
their action encouraged, the Bill was carried that night 
by 283 to 16. Two years before, owing to Pitt's 
failure to give it real support, it had been defeated 
by seven. Grenville wrote to Grey : 

I most heartily congratulate you on the glorious event of 
last night. Come what will, we may now feel the sentiment 
which Fox so often expressed, that we may not have been called 
in vain to the stations that we occupy. How much it is to be 
regretted that he did not live to feel the pleasure of such an event. 

But they were not yet out of the wood. The sudden 
development of the quarrel with the King in March 
threatened the life of the Ministry, and if Portland 



THE SLAVE TRADE ABOLISHED 159 

superseded Grenville and Grey before the Bill had 
received the Royal Assent, Africa would be plunged 
back into the horrors of the slave trade for perhaps 
another generation. It was an awful crisis, and Clark- 
son's words recall the agony of that last struggle on to 
the top of the * obstinate hill ' : 

It was reported that the new Ministry [Lord Portland's] 
was formed ; among them were several who had shown a hostile 
disposition to the cause. On March 23 the House of Lords 
met. Such extraordinary diligence had been used in printing 
the Bill, that it was then ready. Lord Grenville immediately 
brought it forward. But here an omission of three words was 
discovered which, if not rectified, might defeat the purposes of 
the Bill. An amendment was immediately proposed and carried. 
Thus the Bill received the last sanction of the Peers. But the 
amendment occasioned the Bill to be sent back to the Commons. 
On the 24th, on the motion of Lord Howick [Grey], it was 
immediately taken into consideration there, and agreed to ; and 
it was carried back to the Lords, as approved of, on the same day. 

But though the Bill had now passed both Houses, there was 
an awful fear throughout the Kingdom lest it should not receive 
the Royal Assent before the Ministry was dissolved. This event 
took place the next day. But a commission for the Royal Assent 
to this Bill among others had been obtained. As the clock 
struck 12, just when the sun was in its Meridian splendour 
to witness this august Act, this establishment of a Magna Charta 
for Africa, it was completed. The ceremony being over, the 
seals of the different offices were delivered up, so that the execu- 
tion of this commission was the last act of the administration of 
Lord Grenville — an administration which, on account of its 
virtuous exertions in behalf of the oppressed African race, will 
pass to posterity, living through successive generations in the love 
and gratitude of the most virtuous of mankind.^ 

» Clarkson, History of tie Abolition of the Slave Trade ^ 1808. 



CHAPTER III 

SHADES OF OPPOSITION TILSIT TO WATERLOO 1 807-1815 

' I cannot say how much I like Earl Grey — a fine nature, a just and 
vigorous understanding, a sensitive disposition, and infirm health. These 
are his leading traits. His excellencies are courage, discretion, and 
practical sense ; his deficiency, a v/ant of executive coarseness.' — Sydney 
Smith, 18 10. 

The King had reinstated the ultra-Tories, under the 
Premiership of the ex- Whig the Duke of Portland. 
Their first step was to dissolve Parliament, in May 
1807, although there had been a General Election in 
the previous October. The electoral influence of the 
Crown, which had been withheld from their predecessors 
in office at the last election, and a loud * No-Popery ' 
cry, enabled them to improve their Parliamentary 
position against the outgoing Whigs and Grenvillites. 
And inside the walls of the House they could now once 
more count on that large body of members who always 
supported the Government of the day. The * No- 
Popery ' election cost Grey his county seat, which he 
had held without difficulty in spite of his ' Jacobinism ' 
ever since his entry into Parliament. The blow was 
dealt by the Duke of Northumberland, whom he had 
every reason to regard as his political ally. Indeed, on 
September lo, 1806, ' when the dissolution of Mr. Fox 
was hourly expected,' Grey had written on his own 
initiative to the Duke, suggesting that if his son, Lord 
Percy, wished to succeed the great Tribune as member 
for Westminster, ' not a moment should be lost in his 

160 



NORTHUMBERLAND ELECTION, 1807 161 

appearing in person ! ' ^ The proposal, which was 
acted upon, is a good proof of Grey's loyal alliance with 
the Percys. 

What then was he to think when, at the General 
Election eight months afterwards, without the excuse 
of any new issue arisen in politics, the Duke put up this 
same Lord Percy to run with T. R. Beaumont against 
Grey for the representation of Northumberland ? It was 
done without any warning, so that Grey's friends had 
no time to organise their campaign or to collect money. 
Even his staunch supporter. Sir John Swinburne, could 
' only give ;{500,' and on the eve of the poll they had 
but ;;^4,ooo in hand. In those days a contest for a 
county of vast acreage, if fought a outrance between 
two great families, cost at least tens of thousands. 
The freeholders had to be brought from their distant 
homes to the scene of the election at York or Alnwick, 
and kept there for days together at the expense of the 
candidate who hoped for their votes. Stately palaces 
and princely estates had been sunk in Yorkshire 
and Northumbrian elections, of which the fame was 
handed down from father to son among the grate- 
ful freeholders. Grey wisely determined that, rather 
than fight such a contest against the lord of Alnwick, 
he would husband his slender means for his numerous 
progeny, and solutus omni joenore leave them Howick 
with its beeches, its broad green fields, and pleasant 
stone farms intact. He retired just before the poll, 
although he was the popular candidate. Even at 
Alnwick, he writes, * nothing was heard but my name 
in the streets, and those who had got drunk with Lord 
Percy's and Beaumont's ale, did nothing but cry Howick 
for ever ! ' 

Grey's feelings towards the Duke are expressed in 
the following letter to Holland : 

1 Add, MS., B.M., 31, 158, ff. 199-200. For the history of the 
Westminster elections of this period see Wallas' Life of Place. 



1 62 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

It is provoking to have lost a sure seat in such a manner. 
As to the Duke, I will only say that good comes out of evil, 
and that w^hat he has done will relieve me from the necessity of 
listening to his lies and small talk on Saturday, and his damned 
dinner at Alnwick Castle, for the rest of my life. Tierney 
[acting as Whig • Whip '] may certainly take the Duke's mem- 
bers, as least such as will pay due obedience to him, out of 
our list. But after all, our numbers will be very strong, and 
we shall have the satisfaction of making what are called ' good 
divisions,' when the more important business of Fox-hunting, 
etc, does not prevent. 

We are told that the two great Northumbrian families 
were 'reconciled in 1829.' But the following story, 
from the memoirs of a grandson of Lord Grey's, dates 
from a later year ! 

Lord Grey was very kind to his grandchildren. His son. 
Uncle Francis, asked him to let the boys come to Alnwick. 
They were given ten shillings, which they spent on a hatchet 
each, and as they walked home they cut notches in all the Duke 
of Northumberland's gates. They were dragged up to Grand- 
papa by Uncle Francis, and he told him that they had spoilt 
all the Duke of Northumberland's gates. ' No, boys, did you 
really ? ' answered Lord Grey. ' Here is ten shillings more, and 
if there are any gates that are not notched, go and cut them.' 

But to return to 1807, before Grey had yet passed 
the Reform Bill : the ex-member for Northumberland 
was accommodated by Lord Thanet ' in the hand- 
somest manner ' with his borough of Appleby — 
famous for its pigstyes to which votes were attached. 
In July he resigned Appleby in favour of the', Duke of 
Bedford's Tavistock. But he was not long in need of 
pocket boroughs. In November 1807 that fine soldier, 
the first Earl Grey, died at Fallodon, whereupon his son 
ceased to be the commoner, Lord Howick, and sat among 
the peers of the realm as the second Earl Grey. This 
enforced promotion proved, as had been long anticipated, 
a disaster to his party and to his own career. ' We lost 
our best qualified leader in the House of Commons. His 



GREY IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS 163 

place has never been adequately supplied,' wrote Lord 
Holland in 1817 ; and the words remained true until 
Althorp took the lead of the Whig Commoners in 
1830. In the same year, 18 17, the greatest of Earl 
Grey's opponents, the Duke of Wellington himself, said 
in his blunt fashion to gossip Creevey : ' As leader of 
the House of Commons, Grey's manner and speaking 
were quite perfect. But he is lost by being in the 
Lords. Nobody cares a damn for the House of Lords; 
the House of Commons is everything in England, and 
the House of Lords nothing,' a truth which the Duke 
had one day to re-learn under the tutoring of Grey 
himself. 

Grey was a fine orator, and had risen to precocious 
eminence by his mastery of that art in its most high and 
palmy days. But oratory requires an audience, and 
when the House of Commons was closed to him he 
could find none other. The electoral hustings were 
forbidden ground to a peer. After Waterloo, democrats 
of the new era, like Hunt and Cobbett, figured sometimes 
at a ' public meeting,' though not without danger 
and disrepute. But it was not among the duties of a 
respectable party leader, least of all in Grey's estimation, 
to address assembled multitudes of his supporters. He 
eschewed even the decorous eloquence of Fox dinners 
and Whig club banquets.^ Henceforth his voice was 
scarcely ever raised in public except only in the House 
of Lords, and their lordships, though many of them 
were great and distinguished men, formed an execrable 
audience. His own description of the matter to his 
wife in January 1808 may be repeated : 

You will see by the papers that I made my debut in the 
House of Lords last night. What a place to speak in ! With 
just light enough to make darkness visible, it was like speaking 

1 ' I cannot tell you how this Fox dinner annoys me, and the idea 
of being set up there as a sort of show, to bring people to hear me 
speak.' — Grey to his wife, December 25, 18 18. 



1 64 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

in a vault by the glimmering of a sepulchral lamp to the dead. 
It is impossible I should ever do anything there worth thinking of. 

If we remember that the peers who assembled to 
cheer him, or rather to murmur faint applause when he 
sat down, could generally be counted on the fingers of 
one hand, it will not seem unnatural that a man, sensitive 
and easily depressed, should have yielded more and more 
to the promptings of his natural indolence and to the 
call of his domestic affections. The close companion- 
ship of Lord Holland, the soul of friendship incarnate, 
just enabled him to survive the few annual weeks of his 
London life. 

As the years rolled by. Earl Grey became less and 
less active as a party leader — often offering to retire, 
sometimes declaring that he had retired, but never in 
effect allowed to depart. In September 1808 Tierney 
wrote to him with the freedom of an old acquaintance : 

Have you a reason which you can publicly assign for staying 
away ? The death of your uncle ^ has removed the old one, 
a scanty income. What new one have you got which you can 
state ? You must show yourself in the field as the leader of a 
party, or you must cease to be so. Do not flatter yourself that 
a residence in Northumberland is compatible with the station 
you at present hold in public estimation, or that you can put 
greatness off as may be most agreeable to you. 

And so the comedy went on. 

For a score of years to come the conditions of Grey*s 
public career were most unfortunate. Had he been able 
to remain as leader of the Opposition in the Commons, 
he and his party would have been in closer touch, and 
united action would have engendered some degree of 
warmth. In the chill and silence of the hostile House 
of Lords he heard and felt little of the stir of new forces, 
until his youth returned to him in the miraculous year 
of the French barricades. 

* Sir Harry died in 1808, leaving Earl Grey as his heir. 



A DISTRACTED OPPOSITION 165 

The history of the Whig party in the same period 
is a weary tale of personal and sectional quarrels, from 
which Grey kept loftily apart. Their divisions were 
made worse for want of some acknowledged chief of 
high repute, sharing their daily life in the Commons. 
Grey's peerage had left vacant the post of leader of 
Opposition in the Lower House. George Ponsonby 
was chosen, on the principle of taking not the ablest 
but the least objectionable person, with the result that 
all the more able men felt aggrieved, though several 
of them would have been yet more aggrieved if one 
of themselves had been chosen. Ponsonby remained 
official leader in the Lower House until his death in 
1 8 1 7, but his influence was small, and moral unity was 
never obtained among his flock. Thus in February 
1808 Grey writes to his wife : 

Whitbread's manner, of which I find the complaints universal, 
has offended Tierney very much, and Tierney on his part is very 
wrong-headed. Whitbread says Tierney wants victory over 
George Ponsonby, and objects, therefore, to everything that is 
not proposed by himself, Tierney complains that Whitbread is 
almost intolerable from the irritation occasioned by disappoint- 
ment at not being the avowed leader. Though I have the 
character of a hot, intemperate fellow, I begin to think I am 
the most reasonable person amongst them. In the House of 
Lords we are all harmony and good humour. Between Lords 
Grenville, Holland, Lauderdale, and myself there is not a shadow 
of difference or uneasiness. 

Whitbread's chief offence was his habit of intro- 
ducing motions for peace, with which the bulk of the 
Whigs and Grenvillites disagreed. When Napoleon's 
Treaty of Tilsit with Russia had put the seal on his 
domination over Europe, neither Grey nor Grenville 
thought that England could make peace ; such a peace, 
acknowledging Europe to be a province of France, 
must lead to our own speedy destruction. And Whit- 
bread's more excellent schemes for popular education and 



1 66 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

social reform, being regarded by Lord Grenville as 
* Jacobinism,' only made the situation inside the party 
worse. Here is one scene out of a hundred, recorded 
in Grey's letters to his wife: 

Jan. 19, 1808. 

Whitbread came yesterday and dined with us at Lord 
Grenville's. He began upon the subject of peace in so hot 
and, I must say, so wrong-headed a manner, that the impres- 
sion produced must have been most unfavourable to him. Old 
Grenville seemed dumbfounded, and hardly spoke a word. You 
may guess I was on thorns, as the vehemence of his manner was 
more particularly applied to me. I saw him at Brooks's this 
morning, and he seemed to have recovered. It is true I avoided 
everything that might again irritate him. 

In these circumstances even the hospitality of 
Holland House was not always as gay as in the years 
gone by, when the spirit of Fox pervaded its halls. 
Two days later Grey writes : 

Our dinner at Holland House was for the purpose of talking 
over Parliamentary business, but hardly anything passed on the 
subject. I felt low and out of spirits, and after what passed at 
our former dinner I was afraid of beginning. Old Grenville, 
who is the awkwardest of all human beings on occasions of this 
sort, sat with his usual silence, and there was in short no con- 
versation of any consequence except what passed in little knots 
after dinner in the drawing-room. It is Whitbread's manner 
rather than opinions that are to be complained of. 

In 1809 the party was split in two on the sordid 
question of the hour — the case of Mrs. Clarke, which 
absorbed England while Napoleon was laying Austria 
low for the last time in the Wagram campaign. The 
Duke of York, so long commander-in-chief, had a 
mistress, Mrs. Clarke, who quarrelled with him and 
sought revenge. Under the patronage of a Tory 
member of low character named Wardle, who had 
been guilty of great cruelties during the Irish Rebellion, 



CASE OF MRS. CLARKE 167 

she brought forward her charges. She was able to 
prove that she had received money from officers to use 
her influence on their behalf with her royal lover. All 
England was ablaze. Half the Whigs, including such 
highly honourable men as Whitbread, Romilly, and 
young Althorp, took up the case with a righteous anger 
which was perfectly sincere, whether or not it was 
entirely justified. If the whole party had followed 
suit, a great effect might have been produced. But 
Grey, as in the Queen's trial of 1820, refused to make 
party capital, and, looking closely at the facts, saw 
much against Mrs. Clarke, but no proof of corruption 
in the Duke of York. Grey's refusal to move in the 
matter was deeply resented by half the party, for i"- was 
remarked that the agitation, though not officially sup- 
ported, had done more to stir up popular feeling against 
the Tory Government, the Royal Family, and the whole 
oligarchic system than anything else — except, perhaps, 
the similar case of Dundas — since Pitt's gagging Acts 
had put an end to political life in the country. This 
was only too true ; one evil result of stopping up the 
stream of legitimate democracy is that discontent, denied 
its proper channels, will find its way out by the sewers. 
This law of political hydrostatics was further illustrated 
by the excitement over the Queen's trial in 1820, and 
by the prevalent but utterly false belief that another of 
George Ill's sons, the Duke of Cumberland, murdered 
his valet Sellis in 1 8 1 o.^ 

Grey at any rate refused to head the cry about 
Mrs. Clarke. ' It is not by such means,' he wrote to 
Holland, * that I wish to see the influence of the Crown 
reduced.' His views on Mrs. Clarke and her patron 
are expressed in a letter to his wife of May 8, 1 809 : 

1 It was the courageous honesty of the Radical Place at the inquest 
that cleared the Duke's character. See Wallas' Place, chap. ii. Yet I 
possess a ' coloured cartoon,' dating some fifteen years after Sellis' death, 
representing his ghost appearing to the Duke of Cumberland to reproach 
him for the murder ! 



i68 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

I was very glad to see that one member spoke of Wardle 
as I think he deserves, and said he would as soon vote thanks 
to Mrs. Clarke for her virtue, as to him for his patriotism. I 
really think they stand on pretty much the same ground. An 
informer, however useful his information may prove, is generally 
shunned as an infamous character ; and I do not see that Mr. 
Wardle, who by his own acknowledgment, formed an intimacy 
with a vile prostitute to get into her secrets, induced her to betray 
the man whose confidence she had before abused, and who stole 
her letters for the purpose of supporting his charges, deserves to 
be viewed in a much better light. 

May I o. The violent party in the House of Commons are 
going on worse than ever, and still continue to receive, I am 
sorry to say, too much encouragement and support from Whit- 
bread. A new code of political morality and honour has been 
adopted, and everything seems to be greedily taken up that can 
tend to throw discredit on the general system of Government. 
Lord Grenville seems very uneasy on this point. It is difficult, 
however, to find a remedy for evils which have been brought 
on by the manner in which the present Ministers came into 
office. 

Indeed the savage hatred of the Royal Family which 
characterises this period in our history, was due not 
merely to the assailable private character of its younger 
members, but yet more to the political intransigeance 
of its venerable patriarch, who from the threshold of 
the madhouse still made and unmade Ministries, and 
vetoed measures of reform. 

However right he may have been in the case of 
Wardle and Mrs. Clarke, Grey was too nice in his 
choice of associates to be an effective leader of Opposi- 
tion. His dislike of the Radicals, being shared by the 
great majority of his parliamentary followers, con- 
demned the Whigs to impotence as a popular party, 
until they introduced the Reform Bill. In 1792 and the 
following years Grey had felt much attraction as well 
as much antagonism to working-class democracy, but 
in 1 8 10 he seemed only to remember his antagonism 
to Paine, not his sympathy with Hardy. In January 



WHIGS, RADICALS, AND REFORM 169 

of that year, when Sir Francis Burdett was the Radical 
leader, Grey writes to Holland : 

The persons whom you designate Burdettites and Jacobins 
are in truth the best friends of the Court. By diverting the 
public attention from all useful and practical objects, they provide 
the best means of escape for the Ministers from those difficulties 
in which their folly and wickedness have involved them. They 
aim at nothing but the degradation of all public character, their 
watchword being that all Ministers are alike, and that no advan- 
tage is to be derived from any change, thus co-operating most 
effectually with the Court in withdrawing all public confidence 
from its opponents. With this class of patriots I was at war 
in 1792, I am so now, and there is in my opinion a degree of 
meanness in appearing to court them in the slightest degree to 
which I never can submit. 

The Radical literature of the time shows that the 
democratic distrust of the Whigs had been increased 
by the Ministry of All the Talents, because Grey had 
introduced no Reform Bill during his year of office. 
The Radicals did not stop to reflect that half his colleagues 
had been Grenvillites and Addingtonians, bitterly 
opposed to reform. They regarded him as a traitor 
because he had not attempted the utterly impossible 
and so broken up the Ministry the moment it was 
formed. He would, in fact, at any moment of his 
career have been only too glad to pass 'a moderate 
measure of Reform,' but, as he told the House of Lords 
in his speech of June 13, 1810 : 

I doubt much whether there exists a very general disposition 
in favour of Reform. Whenever this great question shall be 
taken up by the people of this country seriously and affectionately, 
there will then be a fair prospect of accomplishing it. But until 
the country shall have expressed its opinion upon this subject, 
the examples of the other nations of Europe should deter us 
from any precipitate attempt to hurry on to premature or violent 
operation a measure on which the best interests of the nation 
so essentially depend. 



I70 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

This utterance may be regarded as the low-water 
mark of Grey's reforming enthusiasm, the result of the 
prolonged war and the unnatural alliance with Grenville. 
During the last years of the Napoleonic struggle he 
was thinking more about Catholic Emancipation than 
about Parliamentary Reform. He was much occupied 
by the arguments which his reverend friend, Sydney 
Smith, had recently laid before the public in the serious 
drollery of the ' Plymley Letters ' ; he too believed that 
the non-fulfilment of Pitt's undertakings to the Irish 
Catholics was a present danger to the Empire at war 
with Napoleon, in whose service Catholic and Protestant, 
Atheist and Jew, were equally welcome and equally 
privileged. After his experience in the Ministry of 
All the Talents, Grey had made up his mind never 
to take office except with power to alleviate Irish 
unrest by admitting Catholics to sit in Parliament. In 
January 1810 he writes to Holland that ' the immediate 
settlement of it by a legislative measure, including the 
enforcement of the veto,^ is the sine qua non of my accept- 
ing office.' And again : * It is a cause in which you 
have both the King and the people against you. ... I 
have been and am ready to make all the necessary sacri- 
fices, being, as you know, quite determined not to accept 
of office without the power of immediately settling the 
question.' It was at this time and on this subject that 
his dislike of Canning took the hard form that it ever 
after retained. He never could forgive a statesman 
who was in favour of Catholic Emancipation, for con- 
senting to take office under the Duke of Portland at 
the expense of the Ministry of All the Talents, which 
had fallen because its members attempted to do some 

^ Viz., the veto of the Crown on the appointment of Roman Catholic 
Bishops, a proposition not then regarded among Roman Catholics 
with such horror as it would now arouse, although it did in fact 
cause great difficulties as between the Whig statesmen who thought 
it essential to the passage of the Bill, and the Irish Catholics who 
naturally disliked it. 



THE SPANISH RISING 171 

small thing for the Catholics. In October 1809 he 
wrote to Holland : 

I am not at all inclined to political proscriptions, and you 
must remember how ready I was, even before our administration 
appeared to be in danger, to enter into terms with Canning 
himself. But what passed then, his immediate acceptance of 
office upon the principle of the late ^ administration, his conduct 
towards us the moment he was in power, and all that has hap- 
pened since, has made so deep an impression on my mind that 
I could not bring myself, either in or out of office, to act with him. 

This * deep impression ' was never effaced, but only 
augmented by subsequent happenings. 

In 1808 the revolt of the Spaniards against 
Napoleon's act of dynastic brigandage aroused the 
romantic enthusiasm of the Whigs, who saw in a people 
betrayed by their princes but true to themselves another 
chapter of the book of freedom, to be added to the tales 
of Wallace, Tell, and Kosciusko. Lord Holland, who 
had travelled much in Spain, was the best informed and 
therefore the least optimistic, but the most steadily 
determined of all, upon this issue. On June 19, 1808, 
Grey writes to him : 

I cannot sufficiently thank you for your very interesting 
account of the state of Spain. I wish I could add that your 
account had raised my hopes of the success of the Insurgents. 
But though in this, which I am inclined to think the most atrocious 
of all his villainies, Bonaparte's measures appear to have been 
too well taken, and though the poor Spaniards are deprived of 
all the advantages which timely preparations and a good Govern- 
ment might have afforded them, still we must not despair. I 
hope they will persevere. If I was a Spaniard I should urge 

^ Viz., the Duke of Portland's administration, March 1807 to 
September 1809, in which Canning was at first Foreign Secretary. 
Perceval had succeeded Portland as Premier just before this letter of 
Grey's was written. Grey and Grenville had been asked to join 
Perceval's administration and had refused. 



172 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

them to do so, even with less hope than they may have of success, 
nay, with the certainty of ultimate destruction. From h.^nce 
I trust they will have every assistance that can be afforded in 
men, ships, and money, to the utmost possible extent. I almost 
wish we were in office at this moment, for the sake of sending 
Lord St. Vincent with the fleet, and you to the Insurgents. 

Lord Grenville, however, objected to the sending 
of troops to Spain, which for a time led to a serious 
difference between himself and Grey. Grey was right, 
but unfortunately he did not stand by his opinion to 
the end, but allowed himself to be shaken by the recon- 
quest of Spain by the French in the following winter. 
On January 26, 1809, he writes to Grenville : 

I have just got the account of Moore's death, and of all the 
disasters that preceded it. It deprives me of all power of expres- 
sion and almost of thought. I must confess that, as things have 
been managed, it is much to be regretted that your opinions against 
sending troops to Spain at all did not prevail. 

From this time forward Grey sided with Grenville 
rather than with Holland as to the possibilities of effective 
co-operation with the Spaniards. The Edinburgh Review 
and the bulk of the Whig party made the same great 
mistake. 

In June 1809 Grey writes to Holland : 

The total want of support to our army, the miserable re- 
sistance in every attack except at Saragossa, certainly do lead 
one to view the national character of the Spaniards and their 
prospects of future success in a very different light from that 
in which you see them. Nor have I the smallest hope, if 
Buonaparte should be able soon to terminate his Austrian war, 
that he will find any great difficulty in settling the business of 
the Peninsula. 

In this state of mind Grey could not believe that 
Wellington's earlier victories, such, as Talavera, were 
doing any real good, since they were generally followed 
by retreats. But as the course of events happily proved 



CONFLICTING VIEWS ON THE WAR 173 

him wrong, he became gradually silent on the subject, 
both in public and private, as the Duke carried the war 
nearer and nearer to the Pyrenees. This error on 
Grey's part, which he shared with a man so fiercely anti- 
French as Grenville, was an error of calculation, not of 
sympathy, and did not arise from any wish to make 
peace with Napoleon so long as he was overlord of 
Europe. It was only in the winter of 18 13 that Grey 
began to wish for peace on the terms of leaving a shrunken 
Napoleon as monarch of France. At that stage of affairs 
his foreign policy again began to differ from that of 
Grenville, who was more anxious to fight the war to a 
finish than were the Ministers themselves. 

Grey's motives for dreading the attempt to conquer 
France, which he deprecated alike in 1 8 1 3 and 1 8 14 and 
again in 18 15, were first his natural * pessimism,' as 
we should now call it, about the outcome of any military 
operation, and his unwillingness to take risks in war. 
Secondly, his dislike and fear of imposing the Bourbon 
Government on an unwilling France, though he admitted 
that a restoration carried out by the French themselves 
would be desirable as being Britain's best guarantee of 
safety. Thirdly, a thorough distrust of the character 
of our Allies, the despots of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, 
whom he held to be a set of scoundrels, out to increase 
their own territories at the expense of the smaller states 
of Europe, and capable of leaving us in the lurch at 
any check or for any bribe, as they had so often before 
done in the last twenty years. For these reasons he 
thought that, although no course was safe, the least 
dangerous policy for England would be to bring all the 
belligerents into a moderate peace, if such was to be 
obtained, rather than to undertake the risks of trying 
to conquer France with such unreliable allies. The 
event proved him wrong. 

On October 24, 18 13, four days after the end of the 
battle of Leipsig, but before the news of it had reached 
England, Grey wrote to Holland : 



174 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

With respect to peace, I don't know what you had written, 
but I conclude that it could not have been that we should give 
the signal of sauve qui pent ^ or that we should indicate any disposi- 
tion to be ' mere benevolent spectators,' much less to desert the 
Allies in the promotion of a necessary contest. What I wish is 
that we should with the Allies offer a joint negotiation on moderate 
principles. Buonaparte would not accept this. Probably not. 
Both his disposition and his interest might, as Grenville says, 
prevent him. But I am obstinate in this opinion — that whether 
successful or not there would be great advantage in making 
the proposal. A sincere proposal, mind, and with a real anxious 
wish for its success. For this, I believe, so far from weakening 
the Alliance, would, if properly managed, strengthen it more 
than any other measure, and Grenville, I am afraid, is sadly 
mistaken if he thinks the Allies actuated by no other motive 
than that of their common danger, or that they have no jealousy 
of the designs of each other, or that the lesser German Princes 
do not fear them all. 

In this letter Grey cannot be said to have differed in 
policy from the Ministers, who did not even repudiate the 
extraordinary action of Metternich and Lord Aberdeen 
in suggesting to Napoleon in November — such was 
their dread of him even after Leipsig — a frontier along 
the left bank of the Rhine. Napoleon, most unwisely, 
failed to accept at once this advantageous basis of negotia- 
tions, and the offer was withdrawn.^ The Allies crossed 
the Rhine and invaded France in the early months of 
1 8 14. It was then that Grey's timidity about military 
operations appeared almost fantastic : 

Howick, Feby. 6, 18 14. 
My dear Holland, — I think with you that a moderate check 
to the Allies would be best for peace, in all views ; but if they 
are checked at all, is it likely to be moderate ? They have 
imposed upon Buonaparte the necessity of driving them back, 
before he can treat, or rather conclude a peace with credit, or 
indeed with safety. The means he has collected are I am per- 

1 Ernouf's Maret, 605-9; Gordon's Aberdeen, 36-9; Rose's 
Napoleon, chap, xxxvi. 



CONFLICTING VIEWS ON THE WAR 175 

suaded most formidable j for the nonsense in the papers about 
his inability to assemble an Army is only to be laughed at ; and 
if he should defeat them in an advanced position, without having 
one fortress to cover them, I doubt very much w^hether they w^ill 
get back to the Rhine as well as he did. It certainly would be 
best of all that they should be forced to repass the Rhine without 
a defeat in the field. It would be sufficient to restore people 
to their senses here, and not enough to enable Buonaparte to 
withstand the very strong and universal desire for peace that now 
prevails in France. 

But he seems to have changed his attitude somewhat 
in the following letter to Lady Holland a month later, 
partly no doubt because the Allies' invasion had fared 
better than he expected, also because he felt it necessary 
to repudiate the tenderness for Napoleon now prevalent 
at Holland House. 

Howick, March ye 12, 1814. 
Dear Lady Holland, — I am afraid I cannot quite submit to 
your politics. I very much doubt whether anything will diminish 
Buonaparte's desire to revenge himself on this country, and I 
very much fear, even if his dispositions were more pacific than I 
believe, that our embarrassments, after a peace has been con- 
cluded, will afford such temptations for attacking us as it will 
be hardly possible for flesh and blood to resist. The more the 
power of France can be reduced, therefore, the better for us. 
Upon this principle the restoration of the Bourbons, as it would 
probably disable France for the next 20 years at least, would 
be best of all. Do not imagine, however, that this would lead 
me to promote war for such an object. 

After the return from Elba, Grey, like the Marquess 
of Wellesley, deprecated a war waged for the ex- 
press purpose of dethroning Napoleon. Fortunately, 
Wellesley's brother settled the question at Waterloo 
before Grey had done more than deliver one speech in 
the House of Lords, protesting against a war ' under- 
taken on the principle of personally proscribing the 
present ruler of France.' He prepared another oration 
which he never delivered, but which exists in manu- 



176 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

script. The two together indicate fully the views he 
held. He believed that the people of France were 
predominantly for Napoleon as the bearer of the tricolor, 
and against the Bourbons, but determined now to have 
their constitutional rights, and unanimously in favour 
of peace. He feared that if our arms were not instantly 
successful, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, who had almost 
gone to war with each other over the division of the 
spoils, might desert us in pursuit of their private interests. 
We should then be left as in 1803, alone against 
France, and committed to wage war till we had 
dethroned Buonaparte, that is till the Greek Calends, 
— negotiations on any ordinary basis between the two 
Governments being precluded by our outlawry of the 
French Emperor. 

Grey's arguments are so far persuasive as to make 
us more than ever grateful to the Duke for Waterloo ; 
for they conjure up a very reasonable picture of the 
condition we should all have been in if the war, having 
been begun, had not been won and finished out of hand. 
But if, in accordance with Grey's policy, Napoleon had 
been left peacefully on the throne of France, Britain 
could scarcely have indulged in that very complete 
measure of disarmament and that breach with the 
despotic Governments of Austria, Prussia, and Russia 
which marked the fortunate turn of our policy after 
Waterloo. 

It was indeed lucky that Grey, for reasons wholly 
unconnected with the war, so often refused office in 
the latter part of the war. He was by nature a pessi- 
mist about the chances of battle, and could never have 
developed either the enterprise or the tenacity requisite 
for a good War Minister. His bold conduct of affairs 
in 1830-32, when he guided the country into and 
through her great revolutionary crisis, showed that 
as a domestic statesman he had more * nerve,' tenacity, 
and phlegm than any of his colleagues, more even than 
Holland and Althorp. But in war he would authorise 



GREY REFUSES OFFICE 177 

no such startlingly bold adventures as Schedule A of 
the Reform Bill ; he would take no such risks as that 
famous second reading division in the Lords. In war 
he was always expecting the worst, often over-estimat- 
ing the foe, periodically subject to cold fits. It is true 
that these tendencies sometimes led him right, as when in 
1807 he protested against the South American adventure 
that was supported by the rest of the Cabinet. But 
his timid views on the Peninsular and Waterloo cam- 
paigns show that he was fortunate in his determination 
to remain out of office during all that period, although 
tie reasons for his repeated refusals were concerned 
only with domestic politics and personal issues. 

On three several occasions between 1809 and 18 12 
Grey with his party might have taken office in a Coali- 
tion Ministry, but fortunately each time he refused. 

His refusal in September 1809 to coalesce with 
Perceval in order to strengthen a High Tory Ministry 
on the retirement of the Duke of Portland, was obviously 
right and was little questioned even at the time, although 
some dismay was caused in Brooks's by his characteristic 
rejection of the proposal by return of post from Ho wick. 
But the issue was more complicated both for him and 
Grenville in the negotiations of i8ii and 18 12, when 
the Prince of Wales, on becoming Prince Regent, felt 
constrained to make advances to ' the old and tried 
friends of Mr. Fox,' as to the formation by them and 
Lord Wellesley of a Ministry dependent on the support 
of Carlton House and on the influence of the Crown. 
But Grey was right in supposing that there could be no 
substance of power in a tenure of office on such terms, 
least of all for any good purpose such as the passage of 
Catholic Emancipation. What chance would there have 
been of Grey and Grenville forcing that measure through 
the Lords in 18 12, seeing that it was all that Wellington 
himself, driven by O'Connell, could accomplish in 1829 ! 
Grey thoroughly distrusted the Prince Regent as * the 



178 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

worst anchoring ground in Europe.' Yet the Ministers 
would have to depend on his support against a ParUa- 
ment hostile to everything Grey cared for, and against 
a country hostile on the Catholic question. Such a 
dependence on Royalty would * unwhig ' them indeed ! 
Grey was a wiser and nobler man than he had been in the 
Regency debates of 1788. 

Furthermore the Prince Regent had for some years 
past been turning Tory by political conviction on the 
Catholic and other questions, and passing at the same 
time under the personal influence of the infamous 
Lord Yarmouth, whom Grey would not consent to court 
or even to tolerate. For old times' sake the Prince 
thought it necessary to make a show of negotiating with 
the Foxites, but Grey shrewdly suspected that he did 
not really wish the negotiations to succeed. Sheridan, 
now in his decline, was still intimate at Carlton House, 
where he used his influence with the Prince to revenge 
himself on Grey for the cold shoulder that had so long 
been shown him. The net outcome of the tiresome 
negotiations of 1 8 1 1 and 1 8 1 2 was to widen the breach 
between the Prince Regent and the Whigs and to render 
George the bitter enemy of Grey, so much so that when 
he became King he decreed a personal taboo of the 
Whig chief as Minister, similar to that which his father 
had so long maintained against Fox. 

The right of the Crown to choose its own Ministers, 
provided that they could, with the help of the Court votes, 
piece together a majority in the House of Commons, was 
a recognised practice of the Constitution up to the reign 
of William IV. Hence the personal relations of George, 
Regent and King, to each of the political leaders were of 
no small importance. By refusing to court the Prince, 
Grey wittingly debarred himself from all chance of power 
during the life-time of a man practically the same age 
as himself. In an era of sycophancy in high places the 
two following letters are refreshing. The first is written 
to his wife on June 25, 18 13 : 



GREY AND THE REGENT 179 

I do not think there is now much chance of our being asked 
to the Prince's fete, but in case a sudden movement of caprice 
should induce him to send us a card, I wish you to answer it 
without delay, and to say that we cannot come. Don't make 
any excuse that can carry any meaning but a direct refusal to go. 

On June 18, 18 14, he writes to Lord Holland about 
the Regent's unhappy daughter : 

I cannot express the indignation I have felt at the treatment 
of the Princess Charlotte. Cruelty to a Daughter is not an 
unnatural accompaniment of base and unmanly conduct to a 
wife. I know how wrong it would be to oppose a doubt to 
the unimpeached veracity of Carlton House, but nothing less 
than so sacred an authority could induce me to believe that she 
can be contented in her present situation. I should otherwise 
say it was altogether incredible and impossible. I really believe 
her life to be in danger ; if it is possible, something should be 
done in Parliament for her protection. 

These two letters do much to explain why so many 
people still respected and trusted Lord Grey, in spite 
of his too frequent ' statesmanlike ' utterances to the 
effect that nothing could be done, and that least of all 
could he himself be called on to do anything. A fire 
still burnt within him which should one day break out 
and consume the world of Old Corruption. 



CHAPTER IV 

WHIGS, RADICALS AND REFORM PETERLOO AND THE 

SECOND REPRESSION HOME LIFE ; LAMBTON AND 

BROUGHAM THE QUEEn's TRIAL CANNING AND 

THE WHIG SPLIT 1816-1827 

' You may be assured that any nibbling at Reform will not now 
do.' — Grey to Lord Holland, Feb. 9, 1822. 

It was now to be proved whether the method of political 
and social change in Great Britain would be by violence 
and revolution or by peaceful progress through Parlia- 
mentary channels. Under the regime established by 
Pitt and perfected by Perceval and Castlereagh, it was 
by no means clear that England would not in the coming 
era be forced to proceed to a war of classes. This would 
inevitably happen some day, unless the British Parlia- 
ment could be brought to reform its own method of 
election. Self-appointed bodies can seldom be induced 
to make themselves elective ; and Burke's doctrine, that 
the existing Constitution was sacrosanct and that the 
laws of England must never be changed, had now the 
sanction of twenty years' acceptance and practice, cul- 
minating in the glories of Waterloo. The men who had 
beaten Napoleon were less than ever inclined to abdicate 
to the mob. Hope of change without violence lay only 
in one quarter : the small party of Fox and Grey had 
refused to acquiesce in Pitt's acts of repression or to accept 
the theory that Parliament might never be reformed. 
If the Whigs had merged themselves in Pitt's reactionary 

180 



REFORM OR REVOLUTION i8i 

hloc^ Reform would have been impossible without re- 
volution, and the history of England would have 
approximated more and more to the histories of France, 
Spain, Russia, Austria, and Germany. That we kept 
our Anglo-Saxon moorings was due to the men whom 
it was the custom of their enemies to represent as bad 
patriots. 

After the end of the Napoleonic war the issue clearly 
emerged. The terrible sufferings of the mass of the 
people, unequalled at any other known period of our 
history, were due to the industrial revolution taking 
place at a time of fierce social and political reaction, when 
the wage earners in town and country had no political 
rights, and under Pitt's Combination Acts hardly any civil 
rights against their task-masters. This state of things 
produced a Radical agitation from 1817 to 181 9, more 
popular and more lasting in its effects than the Paineite 
movement which Pitt had suppressed. 

The attitude adopted towards this new agitation 
by the Tories and by the Whigs respectively would 
show what chance there was of Reform in the long 
run coming without revolution. The first response 
of the Tories was clear and simple — suspension of the 
Habeas Corpus Act in 1 8 1 7, the Peterloo atrocity, and 
the Six Acts in 1 8 1 9. Spies and agents ■provocateurs were 
let loose among the Radicals. Pitt's armoury of panics 
and repression was refurbished without the excuse of 
a foreign war. Social war of the Haves against the 
Have-nots was Castlereagh's programme for the nine- 
teenth century.^ 

^ Recent historical research has done much for Castlereagh's reputa- 
tion as a Foreign Minister, but less than nothing to justify the domestic 
policy for which he made himself personally responsible by introducing 
the Six Acts into the House of Commons. Indeed, the study of the 
H.O. and other papers by Mr. and Mrs. Hammond, embodied in their 
Town Labourer and Skilled Labourer, 1760-1832 (Longmans, 1917 
and 1919), has shown the system of coercion and spying to have been 
even worse than was known. 



1 82 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

On the other hand, the attitude of the Whigs in the 
crisis of 1 8 1 7-9 had a dual aspect, leaving it still uncer- 
tain whether they would or would not ever come to the 
rescue of the country as they ultimately did in 1831. 
On the one hand, they opposed in both Houses of Parlia- 
ment the repressive legislation of the Government, they 
exposed and thereby in the end killed the spy system,^ 
they denounced Peterloo, and maintained the right of 
free speech as the Palladium of the Constitution. In 
so doing they rid themselves of the Grenville alliance, a 
dead-weight upon their future advance. On the other 
hand, they felt and expressed so much aristocratic aver- 
sion to the Radicals, even while they were defending 
their liberties, that union of action between the Whigs 
and the mass of the people was rendered impossible. 
The position of the unpopular Government was secured 
by this cleavage among its opponents. The violence 
of the recrimination between Whigs and Radicals 
in 1 8 17-9 was enough to make some acute observers 
despair of a Liberal party ever arising out of their 
union. 

As to Reform of Parliament, the Whigs still inscribed 
it on their banner, but not as their chief and most 
immediate object. They were so deeply divided as to 
the extent to which a Reform Bill should go, that the 
question was left to be agitated by individuals among 
them like Lambton and Russell, not by the party as a 
whole. A political body that dare not give a lead on 
the prime question of the day is of very little use to 
anyone. During the next decade the Whigs were 
singularly futile and powerless, and were at one time 
outbidden by Canning in the affections of the people. 
But at least they continued to exist as the only party 
with seats in Parliament that could ever possibly take 
up the question of Reform, and save the country 

1 See the lastchapter of Mr. and Mrs. Hammond's Skilled Labourer^ 
entitled * The Adventures of Oliver the Spy.' 



GREY AND REFORM, 1820 183 

from the catastrophe of civil war towards which it 
was moving. 

For all that was good and for all that was inadequate 
in the policy of the Whigs at this period, Grey was 
largely responsible. It was he who, as acknowledged 
leader, broke with Grenville ; ^ resisted the repressive 
legislation and the spirit of Peterloo, yet denounced the 
Radicals ; urged the need of Parliamentary Reform, 
yet declined to lead an agitation for it as an immediate 
measure. All this has long been known, but one 
important fact about Grey has hitherto remained secret : 
in 1820 he had already made up his mind that when 
Reform was brought forward it must be no half measure, 
but that at least a hundred seats must be taken from 
the rotten boroughs. It is highly characteristic of him 
that he confided this great decision to Lord Holland 
in private, but never publicly proclaimed it, until, more 
than ten years later, he surprised the world with Schedules 
A and B of the Reform Bill. He feared in 1820 that 
if he came out, while in opposition, for the full measure 
which he secretly favoured, he would break up the 
party ; and that if he came out for a smaller measure, 
the party would be lost at the bar of public opinion. 
And so he let the Reform question drift. ^ 

He was honourably determined not to make promises 
in opposition which he was not sure of being able to 
fulfil in office. Galled by the Radicals' taunt that he 
had failed to keep his pledges in the Ministry of 1 806-7, 
he laid it down to his intimates as a principle that an 
opposition should promise less than it hopes to perform 
when in power.^ As regards Parliamentary Reform 

^ Grenville's farewell letter to Grey, ending their regular political 
correspondence, is dated Feb. 23, 18 17. 

* See Appendix A, below, letter to Holland, Dec. 6, 1820. 

3 ' The lesson that I have learnt is to pledge myself to as little as 
possible while in opposition, and when in Government, if ever it should 
be my lot to be again in that station, to do as much as I can ' (Grey to 
Lord Holland, March 19, 1811). 



1 84 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

he certainly acted up to this unusual precept in a way 
that puzzled contemporaries and still puzzles historians. 
It was difficult to believe that a statesman had always 
intended when he came into power to do more for the 
people than he had ever promised to them. Yet such 
was the case with Grey. He was too scrupulous for a 
leader of opposition, as well as too inactive and dignified 
to suit an era that was fast becoming democratic. As 
Sir Francis Burdett said of him, * Grey should not have 
been a ■patriot ' (viz. in opposition) ; * he should have 
been a Minister, that was his line.' 

His fixed idea during this long period of inertia was 
to preserve the identity of the Foxite Whigs as a via 
media between Tory and Radical, in the belief that their 
day would come. But he would make no effort to bring 
that day nearer, and was perpetually damping the more 
ardent spirits of his children and infuriating his son- 
in-law Lambton, by telling them that it would never 
come * during my life or even yours ! ' 

In all that Grey said and did, and still more in all 
that he failed to say and do, at this period, his bad 
health was an important factor. He was subject to 
recurrent fits of depression. Lady Grey, too, was often 
very unwell between 1816 and 1826.^ On account of 
his own health and his wife's. Grey was more than 
ever anxious to get his standing resignation of the Whig 
leadership accepted by his colleagues. But Holland, 
into whose hands he wished to resign the succession, 
was firm in insisting that Grey's departure would dis- 
solve the Foxite ' remnant ' into its component parts 
of quasi-Tory and quasi-Radical. This argument and 
the strong entreaties of his wife alone kept Grey at his 
post. Even so he writes to Holland in January 1822 : 

^ On account of her health they left beloved Howick for three suc- 
cessive v^'inters, 1823—5, ^'^^ lived at Government House, Devonport, 
kindly oiFered them by the Duke of Wellington, to vs^hom it belonged as 
Governor of Plymouth. 



HOME LIFE AT HOWICK 185 

* I can now consider myself as little more than a by- 
stander.' ^ 

It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that 
Howick was ever a gloomy house. Pessimism about 
politics is compatible with a great deal of happiness 
at home. It was impossible for Grey not to be happy, 
with a wife whom he adored, amid a swarm of fifteen 
children growing up in singular harmony ; never sent 
away to school ; galloping over the broad grass acres ; 
climbing the sea-worn rocks ; talking endlessly about 
politics and literature, about themselves and their 
acquaintances ; listening to their father read aloud 
by the hour in the well-furnished library ; and, regard- 
less of the age of formality in which they lived, calling 
their parents by pet forms of their Christian names. 
Grey was * Car,' and the letters of his wife and daughters 
show that his occasional fits of impatience or depression 
were cheerfully absorbed into the prevailing atmosphere 
of fun and good humour.^ Lady Grey, writing to 
their eldest boy. Lord Howick, to apologise for the few- 
ness of her letters during her illness, says : 

Car is the person to blame, for he makes such a fuss about my 
being quiet, and comes with such a grave face to feel my pulse 
after the least exertion, that for a quiet life I submit to make none. 

And again, when Howick had taken his seat in the 
Commons in 1826, she writes : 

^ Grey's letter to Lady Holland, Jan. 12, 18 16, is the starting-point 
of many letters on the subject between Grey and the Hollands. In 
May 1824 Lady Grey writes to her husband : ' I really cannot express 
how much I regret the determination you seem to have taken entirely 
to give up all interference in politics. My dearest Charles, this subject 
is become a very sore one with me, and adds very much to the depression 
for which you scold me so unmercifully.' 

" ' Think of Grey telling me that yesterday morning he made his 
first appearance in a new " Wellington " coat, which was no sooner seen 
by Lady Grey and her daughters than it was instantly stormed and 
carried fairly and by main force from his back, never to see the light 
again' (Creevey, Papers, March 17, 1828). 



1 86 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Dearest Henry, — A thousand thanks for writhig to me. 
You were quite right in supposing that I should be very anxious 
about your father's speech, and your account of it dehghts me. 
He tells me it was but indifferent, but I am too well accustomed 
to his disparagement of himself to be alarmed at it, and if he is 
not bouncing about the room, and making exclamations and 
groans, I may be certain that he said nothing of which the recol- 
lection makes him hot. 

His wife's life-long devotion to him is expressed in many 
beautiful love-letters of this late period of their married 
life. But the gracious power of laughing at those whom 
you love, without loving them less, helped the ladies of 
a family that embraced Grey, Howick, and Lambton. 
The relation of the dignified Whig patrician to his 
eager son and heir with the Free Trade heresy, and 
to the hot-tempered Radical of ancient lineage whom 
his daughter Louisa had married, form a political 
and domestic comedy of many acts and scenes. Grey 
and his son-in-law were made to love and plague one 
another. And if Lambton was Grey's gadfly, the need 
was apparent. 

John George Lambton is better known in the history 
of the Reform Bill and of Canada by his later title of 
Lord Durham. His father was that William Lambton, 
Grey's Eton, Cambridge, and Parliamentary friend, and 
one of the original ' Friends of the People,' whose death 
in 1797 had left his son at five years of age the inheritor 
of his unfulfilled renown. John Lambton's position as 
the head of the oldest and most prominent family in 
the mining county of Durham, where the new industrial 
democracy was growing up, became one of national 
importance as soon as it appeared that he had great 
talents, that he was a Radical in his opinions, yet a Whig 
in his party allegiance. 

His first marriage in 18 12, before he had come of 
age, was characteristically celebrated at Gretna Green ; 
but the lady died in the year of Waterloo. In December 
1 8 16 he married Grey's eldest daughter Louisa. The 



GREY AND LAMBTON 187 

nearness to Northumberland of Lambton Castle, Durham, 
the happy intimacy that sprang up between the Howick 
swarm and their vivacious brother-in-law, and the real 
affection that at once bound Lambton to Lord Grey,^ 
brought modern democracy into the heart of the Whig 
counsels. 

Lambton was * Radical Jack ' to the Durham miners, 
but he was genuinely loyal to the Whig party and to 
its chief. Grey's intense indignation at the repressive 
measures of the Government, at the employment of 
spies like the famous Oliver to provoke disturbances 
among the starving operatives, at the official approval 
accorded to the Peterloo magistrates before any enquiry 
had been made, and the closely argued speeches in the 
Lords in which he defended the liberty of the subject in 
these matters, seemed to Lambton much more genuinely 
Liberal than the words and attitude of a good many 
other Whigs. 2 On George Ponsonby's death in 18 17, 
Tierney for a short time succeeded him as nominal 
leader of opposition in the Commons, but his lead was 
spiritless and aimed at attracting moderate votes rather 
than at maintaining Liberal principles. ' I felt a good 
deal dissatisfied with the tameness of the debates, or 
the repressive system of the Government,' wrote Grey to 
Lambton on March 15, 1818, 'but your speech and 
those of Romilly and Brougham in the last debate have 
quite removed that feeling. Tierney ought to have 
spoken.' 

^ ' I have never felt the blessing of a Father's care or advice, and I 
fear I have suffered from it. It is therefore more gratifying to me than 
I can express to be able to look upon you in that sacred light ; upon you 
whom I have always venerated as the first of men in public life, and since 
I have been admitted in your society as the most exemplary in private 
life' (Lambton to Grey, December ii, i8r6). 

^ On June lo, 1817, Grey wrote to the Marquess Wellesley, an 
occasional ally of the Whigs, asking his attendance to oppose the renewal 
of the suspension of Habeas Corpus. He asks ' whether we shall allow 
a practice to be established of suspending the rights of the people of 
England, like the cash payments of the bank.' 



1 88 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Lambton replies : 

I am ready to support anyone whom you think best adapted 
to the situation. But I trust you will not think of giving up 
your own superior control over the whole. There are many 
who only co-operate because they have confidence in you per- 
sonally, and there is a very strong party who have serious objec- 
tions to Tierney's wavering and indecisive system, in whose 
hands, were you to withdraw, the whole thing would be placed. 
I do not say that it is necessary for you to take any active part, 
but do not vacate the situation you now hold of being Fox's 
representative. 

The chivalrous warmth of Lambton's political and 
personal loyalty to his father-in-law in these early years of 
their connection carried him to unexpected lengths. In 
February 1819, at the Westminster by-election caused 
by the tragic death of Sir Samuel Romilly, Lambton 
flung all his energies with great effect on to the side of 
the Whig candidate George Lamb, against the Radical 
candidate Hobhouse, solely because the local Radicals, 
guided by Francis Place, had made severe attacks on 
Lord Grey which Hobhouse had not been in a position 
to repudiate. Grey, knowing that Lambton really 
agreed much more with Hobhouse than with Lamb on 
general politics, was deeply touched by his son-in-law's 
impetuous action in his defence. 

It is not perhaps surprising that the Radicals attacked 
Grey, seeing how he on his side thought and spoke 
of them. In October 18 19 he wrote to Sir Robert 
Wilson about Hunt and the Radical leaders : 

Is there one among them with whom you would trust your- 
self in the dark ? Can you have, I will not say any confidence 
in their opinions and principles, but any doubt of the wicked- 
ness of their intentions ? Look at the Men, at their characters, 
at their conduct. What is there more base, more detestable, 
more at variance with all taste and decency, as well as all morality, 
truth, and honour ? A cause so supported cannot be a good 
cause. They may use Burdett for their instrument for a time, 



GREY AND WILSON 189 

and you also if you place yourself in their trammels, but depend 
upon it, if a convulsion follows, I shall not precede you many 
months on the scaffold, which you will have assisted in preparing 
for us both. 

When Sir Robert Wilson opposed the Reform Bill 
in 1 8 3 1 he used to cite this letter to his friends as proof 
that not he, but Grey, had deserted his principles. Yet 
in fact Grey, as we now know, was in favour of abolishing 
the rotten boroughs wholesale, even at the time when he 
used such violent language against the Radicals. And 
while he wrote thus to Wilson, he was engaged in 
defending these very men, whom he so much feared and 
disliked, from unjust and extraordinary coercion. 

From 1 8 16 onwards Grey was in much closer per- 
sonal relations with the advanced than with the con- 
servative Whigs. Besides Lord Howick and Lambton 
and those of his own household. Sir Robert Wilson and 
Henry Brougham were at this time among the most 
frequent and favourite visitors at Howick. To Sir 
Robert, Grey was drawn by his strong interest in 
Liberalism on the Continent, with which Wilson was 
closely associated in spite of the great part he had 
played as a soldier in the downfall of Napoleon. In 
1 8 1 6 Grey writes to him : 

I have no expectation that in my time at least the cause of 
rational liberty will triumph. In France it seems to me less 
likely than anywhere else ; and the severest charge that can be 
made against Buonaparte is that by the power he exercised, and 
the use he made of it, he prepared the French for irredeemable 
submission to that degrading despotism which now seems to be 
their lot. 

On the news of Napoleon's death, Grey writes to 
his wife : 

I perhaps ought to feel more strongly almost than anybody 
all the harm he has done to the cause for which I have been 
contending all my life. 



I90 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

The most remarkable and entertaining of all the 
visitors to Howick at this period was Henry Brougham. 
The antithesis of Grey in almost every respect, Brougham 
was the embodiment of plebeian self-confidence, self- 
assertion, and vitality. He was a born leader of oppo- 
sition, an unrivalled agitator. Only office and Cabinet 
counsel, destined to show Grey's strength, would reveal 
Brougham's limitations. During the Napoleonic war the 
Whigs had unduly neglected his great talents, and had 
not even regularly supplied him with a seat in Parliament. 
But whenever he was in the House he led the opposition 
in fact though not in name. His fierce attacks in Parlia- 
ment, supported by organised agitation in the country, 
had caused the withdrawal of the Orders in Council in 
1 8 12, and the more doubtful boon of the defeat of the 
income-tax in 1 8 1 6. The movement for the abolition of 
slavery was becoming more and more popular, not a little 
because Brougham had become its loudest champion. Scot- 
tish in all save descent, he believed in popular education, 
and did much to make a hostile world believe in it too. 
That * the march of mind * in the new generation should 
be associated in common parlance with the astonishing 
energies of this one man was in reality a compliment, 
though it was sometimes meant as a sarcasm.^ The 
Queen's trial of 1820 showed him to the world at the 
height of his powers. 

In September 1809 Grey told Creevey that 
Brougham was ' the first man this country has seen since 
Burke's time.' A dozen years later he still immensely 
admired and had not yet begun to suspect him. * On 
you must depend,' Grey wrote to him in 1822, * in the 
first degree, the efficiency of any administration that can 
be formed ! ' It is a curious speculation what Brougham's 
career in office would have been like, if the Whigs had 

1 E.g. in Peacock's Crotchet Castle, where ' the learned friend ' is 
Brougham. His great public service in initiating the movement for 
law reform dates from February 1828. See the excellent life of him 
in Atlay's Victorian Chancellors. 



GREY AND BROUGHAM 191 

come into power at the beginning of the reign of 
George IV. The jealousy of his disposition, the 
eccentricity of his actions, and the instabiUty of his mind, 
though already recognised as defects, were not yet 
heightened by that touch of the insane which turned 
his later years into a long comedy, a contrast in likeness 
to the tragic close of Burke's overburdened intellect. 

There is near Alnmouth a ford on the Aln which 
can be crossed when the tide is not too high. One day 
Grey, who had Brougham staying with him at Howick, 
began to cross the ford, when the marks by the river side 
indicated that it was rather doubtful whether the passage 
were safe. Half way over Grey turned in his saddle, 
and shouted back, ' Brougham, can you swim ? ^ 'I 
never have swum,' was the self-confident answer, ^but I 
have no doubt I could if I tried. ^ 

The action of the Whigs in the Ministry of All 
the Talents in their * delicate investigation ' into the 
conduct of Caroline, Princess of Wales, has been alluded 
to in a previous chapter.^ Since then, Caroline's manner 
of life abroad had been so' eccentric and coarse as to arouse 
very natural suspicions. Whether she was guilty or 
not no man at this hour can with certainty say. On the 
other hand, it is certain that her marriage had been a 
legalised bigamy, since her husband had previously 
been married to Mrs. Fitzherbert, who was still alive; ^ 
it is certain that George cast off his second wife almost at 
once, before he could even pretend to have any ground 
against her, and that he had lived ever since in open 
relations with a number of other women ; and that 
while so living he had set spies of most doubtful charac- 
ter on Caroline's conduct abroad. That was all our 

^ See p, 155, above. 

2 See p. 18, above. In the Grey family correspondence of 1820 
vpe find : ' The Queen says, " I never did commit adultery but once, 
and I have repented it ever since. It was with the husband of Mrs, 
Fitzherbert ! " ' 



192 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

ancestors knew, and all they needed to know in order 
to form a passionate determination that this woman, 
innocent or guilty, should not be divorced by such a man 
on such conditions. 

That man, by the death of George III, had now 
become King ; and his wife, early in June 1 820, returned 
to claim her position as Queen. The Ministers, to 
propitiate George IV, introduced a Bill of Pains and 
Penalties against her into the House of Lords. This 
divorce bill would have to pass both Houses like any 
other law, but evidence would be taken before the Lords 
as in a Court of Justice. Outside the walls of the 
House the feeling in all classes was as strong for the 
Queen as it was for the Reform Bill a dozen years 
later. 

As the Queen's trial dragged its foul length along 
day after day for four months, an utter contempt for 
their rulers, Royal and other, sank deep into the hearts 
of the people. Though the Queen was in a sense the 
heroine, her low vulgarity was in itself a powerful argu- 
ment for levellers and republicans. The whole system 
of political corruption and oppression, rooted in the 
throne, which Pitt had fostered and his successors had 
rendered so triumphant, everything for which the old 
Toryism stood, was industriously rolled over and over 
in the mud before the eyes of the whole nation, with 
Brougham, the Queen's Attorney-General, for showman 
of the spectacle. The Radical cartoonists, strong in 
the rising genius of Cruikshank, had already fared 
sumptuously on Peterloo, and now battened on the 
shapeless figure of George IV.^ In these bad years two 
images stood familiarly to the starving workmen of Eng- 
land for the two aspects of government as they knew it : 
a mounted yeoman, shako on head and sabre in hand, 
riding over the bodies of shrieking women and children ; 

^ George was often represented as a Chinese Mandarin because 
the PaviHon at Brighton, which he had built in the Chinese style, was 
his favourite residence. 



THE QUEEN'S TRIAL, 1820 193 

and a fat * Chinese ' voluptuary lolling on a couch, sur- 
rounded by obsequious Ministers catering for his whims 
and vices. 

The temptation to the Whigs was immense to take 
up Queen Caroline's cause as a party cry. But Grey, 
though he loathed the husband and despised the obse- 
quiousness and folly of the Ministers in bringing in 
the Divorce Bill, disliked the wife and was in two minds 
as to her guilt or innocence. Above all he remembered 
that he had now, much against his will, been called on 
to act with his brother peers as jury in her case, and 
that, if the Bill passed the Lords, the Commons would 
in their turn be called on to pronounce by their votes a 
quasi-judicial verdict. As early as August 1 8 1 9, when 
coming events were already casting their shadows 
before, he had written to Brougham : ' We as a party 
have nothing to do but to observe the most perfect 
neutrality, and to decide upon the evidence as we should 
do in any other case.' To that principle he steadily 
adhered to the end, much to the disgust of more eager 
politicians. 

In this spirit he sat out the Queen's trial before 
the Lords through the summer and autumn of 1820, 
following the evidence with the utmost impartiality and 
altering his balanced opinion more than once as the 
case proceeded. His daily letters to his wife at Howick 
describe the scenes and give us his inmost thoughts. 

On June 23 he mentions the preliminary attempts 
at a compromise on the floor of the House of Commons : 

All that I heard of Brougham's speech was very bad : a 
very inadequate defence of the Queen if he felt her to be inno- 
cent, and betraying in every word of it, as indeed he appears to 
me to have done in every part of his conduct, a consciousness 
that he was charged with the management of a bad cause. ^ 

^ Mrs. Brougham did not call on the Queen, an omission that she 
bitterly resented. The Queen disliked and distrusted Brougham, but 
could not dispense with him. 

o 



194 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

[July 3.] Lauderdale assured me that the evidence against 
the Queen is complete and to the last degree disgusting. I 
have always believed that if the case came to a public hearing 
she must be ruined, but those who maintain her cause will have 
ample opportunity of still more inflaming the public mind, already 
in a state of such fearful irritation, and worked upon by the 
other cause of discontent, distress. This is her only game, which 
she will play desperately and fearlessly, but I hope unskilfully. 
Otherwise I should feel by no means confident that it might 
not succeed, and that she may not resemble the Empress Catherine 
in more features of her character and fortunes than one. 

[July 4.] The Ministers ought to be hanged for the situation 
into which they have brought this unfortunate business, and I am 
by no means sure that this will not happen before its conclusion. 

It will be seen therefore that Grey began to listen to 
the evidence with no predisposition in favour of the 
Queen. The bad character of the Italian witnesses 
against her evidently surprised him, and he was much 
relieved to find that at the end of all he was able honestly 
to pronounce that no case had been made out against her. 

[August 2i.j The witnesses are obviously of the lowest 
class, and exposed to strong suspicion, and certainly far inferior 
in respectability and credit to those whom most Ministers declared 
to be unworthy of belief in 1807. We have not finished the 
first witness. His name is Theodore Majocchi. He has already, 
if he cannot be contradicted or discredited, proved a complete 
case. When he came to the bar the Queen stood up close 
opposite to him, fixed her arms akimbo, looked him full in the 
face, cried out or rather shrieked out, ' Theodore ! ' and ran 
out of the House. She did not appear again. 

The mob outside is as good-humoured as possible. My 
white hat meets with great applause from them. ' Ah ! you're 
a Radical — the Queen for ever ! ' are the salutes with which I 
am greeted as I pass.'^ The Duke of Wellington, on the con- 

1 Orator Hunt, the famous Radical whose arrest at the Reform 
meeting, Manchester, the year before, was the occasion of Peterloo, 
wore a white top-hat, which became the symbol of Radical opinions for 
years to come. Many respectable people abandoned wearing white 
top-hats for this reason. 






THE QUEEN'S TRIAL, 1820 195 

trary, is hissed and hooted with a degree of violence which once 
or twice has appeared rather alarming.^ 

[August 22. J Brougham is not, I think, a good cross-examiner, 
and indeed it is very difficult through an interpreter, but he has 
damaged the witness Majocchi a good deal. Majocchi answers, 
nine cases out of ten, ' non mi ricordo^ ^ and often in cases in 
which, if he had told the truth in the first instance, not to recol- 
lect is impossible. 

It will be a most singular event if with such strong pre- 
sumption of her guilt as can leave little doubt of it, the nature 
of the evidence should allow the Queen to escape. Flahaut 
stood very near the Queen (her back was to me), and could see 
her face perfectly when she made that strange exhibition on 
Majocchi's first appearance. He says her countenance was 
that of a fury. 

[August 24.] I dined at Brooks's with Thanet and Brougham. 
The latter is in great spirits and high good humour. 

[October 2,] I hear of nothing but processions with addresses 
to the Queen. Tegart told me that in one which passed this 
morning, there were counted 160 carriages and four. What 
disgusting folly ! if it does not deserve a worse name, I have 
not made up my mind. Whenever I do so, to whatever obloquy 
I may expose myself you at least will, I am sure, do me 
justice. 

Now began the defence : 

[Oct. 4.] Brougham has just concluded a most powerful and 
effective speech. I think he has many faults, but he also has 
powers which perhaps no other man possesses. He has made 
a great impression on the House, and if his evidence comes at 
all up to his statements, the Bill will not pass the Lords. 

[Oct. 12.] Lieutenant Hownam gave upon the whole a 
very good evidence, and has left the fact of the Queen's sleeping 

1 The Duke supported the Bill, not from servility to the King, but 
from contempt of the mob. He particularly disliked George IV ; 
when warned by Portland that if the Bill passed the Lords there would 
be reprisals to expose the King's past life, he replied : ' The King is 
degraded as low as he can be already' (Greviile, Oct. 15, 1820). 

* ' I do not remember.' After this, the most famous incident in the 
most famous trial of the century, our ancestors used ' non mi ricordo ' as 
a proverbial expression implying mendacity. 



196 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

under the same tent with Bergami in such circumstances that I 
do not think it possible to infer guilt from that circumstance 
alone, in such a manner as to justify a vote of the House in favour 
of the Bill.^ Every other fact of the case is decidedly damaged. 

[Oct. 14.] My hopes revive of throwing out this Bill, against 
which I think I may now say certainly that I shall vote. The 
impression made against it yesterday was very great. 

[Nov. 3.] I have just finished a speech of three hours, if I 
may believe my friends very successfully, and to say the truth 
I am not dissatisfied with myself. Jenky ^ is now roaring in 
answer to me, and I feel myself quite unable to listen to him. 

Grey's speech, which was printed in full and circu- 
lated through the country, was an admirable summing 
up of the more important evidence, to demonstrate 
that there was no proof of guilt. His closely argued 
verdict had a much greater effect on the Queen's behalf 
than if he had been her partisan from the first, as so many 
of his friends had wished him to be. When a few days 
later the Ministers withdrew the Bill, which they could 
scarcely hope to force through the closely divided Lords, 
and would certainly lose in the Commons, Grey enjoyed 
on his return to Northumberland a popular triumph 
that he had deserved all the more because he had not 
gone out of his way to court it. At Alnwick the whole 
population of the town, and the farmers from twenty 
miles around, had gathered to welcome him, thereby 
' giving great offence to the Duke of Northumberland, 
on whom so many are dependent.' They had arranged 
to take out the horses and draw Grey's carriage the whole 
seven miles to Howick, and only desisted when he made 
it clear that in that case he would get out and walk. 
They could not, however, be prevented from seeing him 
home by moonlight. ' Every tradesman of Alnwick 
and multitudes of the most respectable farmers, all well 

'■ The Lieutenant's evidence impressed some of the Lords very 
differently, in a sense damaging to the Queen. 

2 ' Jenky ' = Jenkinson, viz., Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister. 



GREY'S ATTITUDE TO PRINCES 197 

mounted, their hats and horses' heads covered with 
blue ribbons,^ and rending the air with shouts, accom- 
panied him to his hall door.' 

Whatever popularity he had gained by his speech 
and vote in the Queen's trial, Grey had thereby for- 
feited what small chance he ever had of holding 
office in the new reign. George IV regarded him as 
George III regarded Fox — as a personal enemy whom 
he would never receive as Minister. For his part. 
Grey was ready to give all men, including kings, their 
due, but no more. In January 1822, in one of the 
many affectionate and carefully paternal letters that he 
wrote to Lord Howick at Trinity, Cambridge, he sums 
up in a sentence his views on ' Princes.' The Duke 
of Sussex was the Whig member of the Royal Family, 
and a man of really liberal views. * I am very sorry,' 
writes Grey, ' that you declined Mr. Brown's invitation 
to meet the Duke of Sussex. I have no reason to recom- 
mend any extraordinary pains to conciliate the favour 
of princes, but a proper respect is due to them, for 
which they have an additional claim when they behave 
welly which they rarely do.^ 

The Tory Cabinet survived the measureless shame 
and unpopularity of the Queen's trial, because the King, 
much as he hated the Ministers for bungling the Bill, 
hated the Whigs still more for voting against it, and 
for their association with his arch-enemy Brougham. 
Now the choice of the Prime Minister effectually rested 
with the King. The Whigs only mustered some 170 
votes in opposition, and they would do nothing on the 
one hand to court the King for office, and for the large 
number of votes in the House which was the perquisite 

1 In Northumberland blue was the Whig, and is still the Liberal, 
colour. At the time of these demonstrations Lady Grey wrote, ' It is 
a pity Henry [Lord Howick] is not of age, as I believe he could at this 
moment carry the county with ease.' He failed six years later, when 
the Tories, thanks to Canning, Peel, and Huskisson, had justly become 
less unpopular. 



198 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

of Ministers favoured by the Crown ; nor on the other 
hand would they lead the Radicals in an agitation for 
a really extensive reform of Parliament. In 1 8 30-1 
the Whigs, under altered circumstances, were able to 
do both these things at once, and only thus managed 
to maintain themselves in office until they had remodelled 
the Constitution that was so heavily weighted in the 
interest of their rivals. 

But though the Tories for the present continued in 
office, the darkest hour of our domestic history was 
already over. Some measure of trade prosperity came 
to alleviate the worst pangs of economic distress. And 
in 1822 changes began to take place in the personnel 
and spirit of the Government. 

In January of that year Peel succeeded to the Home 
Office. He stopped the whole system of coercion and 
espionage in England, without any ill effects on public 
order. His life's work of transforming the old Tory 
party into the Victorian Conservative party was begun, 
not as some think with the Tamworth manifesto of 
1834, but when he cleared out the mystery of iniquity 
in the Home Office, a dozen years before. It was 
then that Pitt's system received its first real blow. The 
fact that Peel still swore by Pitt, and was still an anti- 
Catholic and anti-Reformer, gave him that secure place 
in the Tory citadel which he employed gradually to 
transform the whole spirit and method of the party. 
The Reform Bill, though he opposed it, enabled him to 
complete his work. 

In August of the same year, 1822, the death of 
Castlereagh [Lord Londonderry] made Canning the 
leader of the Commons and the head of the Foreign 
Office. Canning had in April reaffirmed his objection, 
based on the principles of Burke, to all reform of Par- 
liament ; he never descended from this position, but 
he proceeded as Foreign Minister to put unreformed 
England at the head of the Liberal movement in Europe 
and America. The repeal of Pitt's Combination Acts 



THE NORTHUMBERLAND ELECTION 199 

against workmen's Trade Unions/ and the beginning 
of penal law reform, showed the spirit of the new age 
working on the Tory Parliament. 

At the General Election of 1826 Grey put up his 
son and heir to stand for his own old county seat of 
Northumberland. By the time the fifteen days of 
open polling were ended, the contest had cost the family 
;i^i4,ooo, which it could ill afford, chiefly in transport 
and tavern bills for the Whig freeholders. It was one 
of the most famous elections in North-country annals ; 
volumes of record and recrimination were published 
about its details. Lambton, whose own election for 
Durham was a walk-over, threw his magnificent ener- 
gies into Lord Howick's campaign. His invasion of 
Northumberland was bitterly resented by some, for 
although Lambton chanced to be a Northumbrian 
freeholder he was pre-eminently a Durham magnate ; 
nor were his politics popular with the Whig or Tory 
gentry. Grey indignantly defended his son-in-law's 
civic rights on the north of Tyne and welcomed his 
aid. This quarrel and the personal hostility between 
the Grey family and Thomas Wentworth Beaumont, 
the Whig-Radical candidate,^ lent zest to the election. 
And since the two Tory candidates, Liddell and Bell, 
disliked each other as much as the two Liberals, Howick 
and Beaumont, the consequent recriminations about 
* secret coalitions ' and ' splitting votes * with the enemy 
wore every one's temper to the edge, especially as the 
campaign was conducted in the hottest summer on 
record. 

On one of the last days of the polling, while the rival 
parties and their brass bands were conducting themselves 

^ See pp. 99—100, above. 

^ Son of the T. R. Beaumont who, with Lord Percy, had defeated 
Grey in 1807 (see pp. 160-1, above). The Beaumont of the third genera- 
tion long afterwards told my father. Sir George Trevelyan, that the 
election of 1826 cost his father, T. W. Beaumont, ^80,000, after he had 
disallowed ;^l 0,000 of the original bills sent in. 



200 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

at the Alnwick hustings for all the world like the men 
of Eatanswill in the ' Pickwick Papers,' an altercation 
arose on the platform, which ended in Beaumont calling 
Lambton a liar. The gentlemen adjourned to the 
neighbouring inns to arrange preliminaries. It was 
the last night of June. News reached Howick Hall, 
and before dawn of July i Earl Grey in dreadful 
anxiety had galloped into Alnwick, * unattended by 
a single groom,' as was noted by local reporters, now 
all agbg. * In all the wide border ' there was * racing 
and chasing ' of the authorities to stop the duel. But 
the law was dodged and the meeting took place with 
pistols on Bamborough sands, to the safety and satis- 
faction of both parties. ' Radical Jack ' went back to 
Durham thrice a hero of ballad, and the ties were drawn 
closer than ever between him and the household at 
Howick, out of zeal for whose cause he had risked his 
life.i 

Lord Howick and Beaumont were both beaten, 
each to the joy of the other. But Howick was provided 
with the rotten borough of Winchelsea, and the day 
when he should sit as a Northumberland county member 
was not long postponed. In Parliament he soon made 
his mark, greatly to the delight of his father, who was 
ambitious now only for his son. But Grey was less 
pleased that Howick's enthusiasm was chiefly devoted 
to the cause of Free Trade. 

On the question of corn [Grey writes to his son Charles in 
1 827 J, Henry's opinions are quite at variance with mine, and if 
carried into effect would prove most injurious to the country, and 
would at once ruin him and me. But however I may differ from 
him, I never can find fault with his acting boldly in support of 
an honest opinion. 

In February 1827 the sudden illness and retire- 
ment of Lord Liverpool caused the progressive and 

^ Poll-Book of the Election, printed Alnwick 1827; MS. letters of 
the Grey and Lambton families ; Reid's Durham, i. 170—2. 



BOTH PARTIES BROKEN UP 201 

reactionary wings of the Tory party to fall asunder. 
For some years past, only the Premier's moderating 
influence had held them together in one Cabinet, where 
many a battle had been fought over Canning's foreign 
policy and Huskisson's Free Trade. The Tory cleavage 
was one of principle and became permanent, but it had 
the temporary effect of splitting the Whig party also, 
on a question not of principle but of persons and tactics. 

In April 1827 Canning and Huskisson, having 
quarrelled with Wellington and Eldon, appealed to the 
Whigs to enable them to carry on a Government that 
should prolong the recent Liverpool policy, essentially 
liberal on foreign and commercial questions. The 
main body of the Whigs, including Holland and 
Lansdowne, Lambton and Brougham, consented to the 
alliance. Canning formed a Ministry out of his own 
Tory supporters, henceforth known as Canningites,^ 
with Lansdowne and Tierney almost alone to represent 
the Whig interest in the Ministry. 

It cannot be said that the Whigs drove a hard 
bargain, and Grey complained that they had driven no 
bargain at all. The new Cabinet announced that it 
would maintain the Test Act against Dissenters, and 
refuse Parliamentary Reform on principle ; Catholic 
Emancipation was to be left an * open question ' as it 
had been for thirty years past in every Tory administra- 
tion, that is to say the Catholics were not to be emanci- 
pated. It may well be asked what the Whigs got in 
return for breaking up their own party. The answer 
made by Holland and Brougham was that they had taken 
the only means to prevent power falling back into the 
hands of Wellington, Eldon, and the Tories of the old 
school. They claimed also that their action made a 
lasting division in the Tory ranks, and so prepared great 
things for the future. 

^ The chief Canningites, besides Huskisson (oi. Sept. 1830), were 
Palmerston, William Lamb (Lord Melbourne), Charles Grant, and Lord 
Goderich, all of whom joined Lord Grey's Reform Cabinet, Nov. 1830. 



202 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

There was indeed much to be said on both sides of 
the contention that now divided Brooks's. The action 
of the Whigs who followed Holland into Canning's 
camp did render permanent Tory reunion impossible, 
and led to the inclusion of the Canningites in Grey's 
Reform Ministry three years later. But it was a perilous 
game, and its first effect was to divide the Whigs them- 
selves and put an end to the separate existence of their 
party. If Canning had not chanced to die when he did, 
there could have been no Whig reunion and no Reform 
Bill. For Canning was one of the most determined and 
by far the most popular and powerful of the opponents 
of Parliamentary Reform.^ If he had lived, his genius, 
so justly attractive to young Liberals, would have con- 
tinued to lead the progressive politicians of the country, 
by the path of a liberal foreign policy, further and 
further away from Parliamentary Reform. Grey's dis- 
trust of the Canning-worship of the other Whigs was 
therefore a sound and useful instinct on the whole, 
though some of it was due to personal prejudice. 

It is impossible not to feel that both Grey and 
the Whigs from whom he differed in 1827 had made 
their difficulties for themselves, by their timidity in not 
giving the country a lead on Reform during the pre- 
vious decade. They had stopped so long in the 
water that Canning at last had stolen their clothes. 
He had become England's Liberal hero, because his 
foreign policy at least meant something that people 
could understand and follow, at a time when they were 
given no other lead. The Whig divisions in 1827 were 
the just punishment of a party that would not take an 
active line of its own. It looked like the end of the 
Whigs, but Canning's death enabled them to survive 
and reunite. They got one more chance, and took it. 

^ 'The Reform Bill frightened me in 1831,' wrote Mr. Glad- 
stone ; ' Burke and Canning misled many on that subject, and they mis- 
led me ' {Life, bk. i. chap. iii.). The worst of great thinkers, said John 
Bright, is that they so often think wrong. 



GREY DIVIDED FROM HIS FRIENDS 203 

There was nothing inevitable about the Reform Bill ; 
the way for it was cleared by a series of extraordinary 
accidents, of which Canning's death in August 1827 
was the first and most important. 

The reasons why Grey refused his support to Canning 
in 1827 are clearly set out in his famous speech in the 
House of Lords on May 7 against the new adminis- 
tration, and in his private letters to Lord Holland and 
to his own family.^ 

First and foremost, he thought that for the Foxites 
to become unconditional supporters of a Tory Ministry, 
without obtaining any influence over its policy, was 
tantamount to ' the dissolution of the Whig Party and 
the total destruction of its consequence and character.' 

So much for underlying principle. Descending to 
details, he declined to support a Government that was 
not only opposed to Parliamentary Reform but had taken 
its stand against the relief of the Protestant Dissenters 
in the matter of the Test Act, and would do nothing for 
Catholic Emancipation. Grey despised Pitt and Canning 
because, although they were as much in favour of 
Catholic Emancipation as he was himself, they were 
ready to hold office without emancipating the Catholics. 
To a Ministry formed on that basis he would give no 
help. If Catholic Emancipation had been part of the 
programme of the new Administration, he would have 
advised his friends to join it, and would have lent it his 
* fair support,' though he would not himself have taken 
office under a statesman he distrusted. ^ 

His * rooted distrust of Canning ' was the legacy 
of early years. Long before Waterloo Canning had 
managed to arouse against himself the suspicion and 
disapproval of statesmen of all parties, who regarded 
him rather as Disraeli was regarded in the early part of 
his career. These old-world impressions lingered in 

^ See Appendix B, below : ' Grey's views of Canning's Policy, 
1822-27.' 

2 See letters, Feb. 9, March 13, April 14, 1827, Appendix B, below. 



204 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Grey's mind, though they were quite unknown to the 
men of the younger generation. If Canning had ever 
been an * adventurer of genius ' he was now a sober and 
careworn statesman. 

Lastly, Grey, though he was no less a ' Liberal ' in 
foreign afFairs than Canning, regarded his rival's pro- 
ceedings in the two hemispheres with a critical eye. 
He thought that if England had taken a stronger line 
at the Congress at Verona, reactionary France would 
never have dared to invade Spain in 1823, and to suppress 
the Liberal movement in the Peninsula ; and that even 
after Verona Canning should have threatened war to pre- 
vent the French from crossing the Pyrenees. He regarded 
Canning's recognition in 1825 of the already accom- 
plished independence of the Spanish colonies in America 
as too belated to have merit ; England seemed to him 
merely to have followed the lead of President Monroe. 
The famous speech in which Canning had said : ' I 
called the New World into existence to redress the balance 
of the Old,' was in Grey's eyes a piece of egoistic clap- 
trap, intended to cover up the fact that he had failed to 
save the Liberals of Spain from the French Reactionaries. 
He even refused to believe that Canning had differed 
seriously from his colleagues in the Cabinet, forcing 
his foreign policy through against their will. Posterity 
has not endorsed this criticism of the Foreign Minister 
who initiated a trend in British policy which Grey him^- 
self revived and continued a few years later .^ 

During the brief Premiership of Canning from 
April to August 1827, Grey was almost completely 
isolated. Except Althorp and some of the Russells, 
all his old and new political colleagues had deserted him 
to follow the statesman whom he most disliked. Even 
his lifelong correspondence with Holland House was 
suspended. ' I am left nearly alone,' he wrote to his 

* See letters, Appendix B, below. For the defence of Canning, 
see Stapleton's Canning, vol. iii. pp. 403-25, and Temperley's Canning, 
passim. 



DARKEST BEFORE DAWN 205 

son Charles on July 2nd, * being separated from almost 
all my old friends, including Lambton. But do not 
believe any reports you may hear of my having formed 
any new connections. I stand aloof from all parties, 
acting upon my own principles.'^ The party that it 
had been the work of his life to foster at every sacrifice 
of his own popularity and ambition had for the moment 
"ceased to exist. If he, instead of Canning, had died 
in 1827, he would have appeared in history as a pathetic 
figure, an honourable man indeed, but one of the least 
successful of British statesmen. But the fatality that 
had for forty years dogged his fortunes and those of 
Parliamentary Reform was now, at this hour of dis- 
couragement, about to give way to an amazing run of 
luck. A series of unexpected events, personal and 
political, foreign and domestic, led England swiftly on 
to the crisis, like many paths hastening to one end. 

1 He had been falsely accused of combining with Wellington to 
turn out Canning, because he had voted in June for a Com Law Amend- 
ment of the Duke's with which he agreed. See his letter to Lord John 
Russell, Early Correspondence of Lord John Russell, i. 262-5. 



CHAPTER V 

THE TIDE SETS IN 1828-183O 

' What is passing is a renewal of a more frightful kind than the 
prospects of 1791, 2, 3, 4, and 5. The occurrences of those days, 
involving the Crown as well as the Houses of Parliament, by express 
mention, in revolutionary projects — the language " No King " — gave 
a treasonable character to the proceedings of that era which enabled 
Government to deal with it by law. That is now carefully avoided, 
and the proceedings of this day are therefore the more difficult to be 
dealt wdth. They are, of course, more dangerous. The sacrifice, too, 
of the Test Act and the passing of the Roman Catholic Emancipation 
Bill have established a precedent so encouraging to the present attempts 
at revolution under name of Reform, that he must be a very bold fool 
who does not tremble at what seems to be fast approaching.' — Lord 
Eldon to Lord Stowell, April 1830. 

The death of Canning (August 1827) cleared the 
ground for the reunion of all the Whigs under Grey ; 
for the absorption in the Whig party of the * Canningite * 
statesmen, including Palmerston and Melbourne ; and 
for the passing of the great Reform Bill by these combined 
forces. But the first effect of Canning's death was 
exactly the opposite. After an attempt to carry on a 
* Canningite ' Ministry without Canning had speedily 
been wrecked by the proverbial inability of ' goody 
Goderich ' as Prime Minister, George IV sent for 
Wellington, who in January 1828 formed a Cabinet 
of Tory reunion. The Duke and Peel were from the 
first the two pillars of the new structure, and were 
all that remained of it at the end ; but the original 
Wellington Ministry contained also the Canningites 
under the leadership of Huskisson. 

206 



'DISHING THE WHIGS,' 1828 207 

The Whigs were dished indeed. Grey and Althorp 
had the mournful satisfaction of pointing out to their 
erring friends that * the insurrection at Brooks's and 
Lord Lansdowne's weakness ' in joining Canning had 
discredited and broken up the Whig party, merely to 
reinstate the Tories under Wellington.^ The bitterness 
of the personal divisions between the Whig leaders 
in 1827, though the subject of their difference was 
removed, could not at once be forgotten. Grey's 
friendship with Brougham never recovered, and even 
his far deeper confidence in Holland was not restored 
to its former perfection until the rapid movement of 
events in 1830 compelled the two veterans to resume 
their old, loving and intimate consultations for the public 
weal.^ The Whig party, in fact, had to endure a period 
of convalescence before it was fit to take the field for 
the greatest and most glorious campaign in the hundred 
and fifty years of its history. But while the Whigs were 
hlowly reuniting, the Duke was busy breaking up the 
Tory party into three hostile factions. At length in 
1830 the breaches that he had made in his own rampart 
gaped so wide that the long-hesitating Whigs were 
tempted to close their ranks once for all and lead the 

* Althorp to John Russell, Jan. 13, 1828. 

In young Macaulay's Political Georgics (dated March 1828) we 
read : 

' How Cabinets are form'd and how destroyed. 
How Tories are confirmed, and Whigs decoy'd.' 
And further on : 

' Though scowls apart the lonely pride of Grey, 
Though Devonshire proudly flings his staiF away. 
Though Lansdowne, trampling on his broken chain. 
Shine forth the Lansdowne of our hearts again.' 

Devonshire had held the Lord Chamberlain's staff, and Lansdowne had 
sat in the Cabinet in the Canning and Goderich Ministries. 

* The political correspondence between Grey and Holland is rare 
in 1828. As might be expected. Lady Grey was more unforgiving 
towards Grey's old friends for their 'desertion' of him in 1827 than 
was Grey himself, e.g. Lady Grey's letters in Appendix C below. 



208 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

eager nation to storm the citadel of privilege. If any 
statesman did as much to pass the Reform Bill as Lord 
Grey, it was the Duke of Wellington. 

Grey's refusal to prefer one section of Tories to 
another was justified by events to this extent, that more 
Liberal ^ legislation was passed under Wellington than 
under the Canningite Ministry which Lansdowne and 
Brougham had supported. Canning's Cabinet had been 
pledged to prevent the Repeal of the Test and Corpora- 
tion Acts, and to shelve Catholic Emancipation ; fifteen 
months after the Duke took office both relieving Bills 
had become law ! 

The Test and Corporation Acts excluded all 
Dissenters from holding public office, great or small, 
municipal or national, though in practice a yearly 
Indemnity Bill was passed to pardon those who had 
broken the law. In February-March 1828 a private 
member's Bill to repeal the disabling statutes, introduced 
by Lord John Russell, was carried through both Houses. 
The majority in the Commons had been so great that 
the Government thought it wise to negotiate its passage 
through the Peers, their Lordships only adding a rider 
to exclude Jews from the benefits of the Act. * Peel is 
a very pretty hand at hauling down his colours,* wrote 
Lord John in answering congratulations. A year later a 
still more magnificent flag, guided by the same skilful 
hand, came fluttering down on to the deck. 

1 The word ' Liberal ' begins in these years to appear in common 
parlance, not to describe a party, but to express the general tendency of 
progressive views on various subjects, whether held by Canningites, 
Whigs, or others. Thus, on January 21, 1828, Campbell writes of the 
Duke's new Ministry : ' The Whigs are all out and Canning's friends 
remain in. That is exactly the combination of circumstances that I 
dreaded. A pure Protestant and ultra-Tory administration I should 
have been very well pleased to see. This would have led to a com- 
bination among all the Liberals, who would ere long have been again 
in office, with power to carry their measures into effect,' ' Liberal ' 
was already a party term in France. 



THE DUKE BREAKS UP THE TORIES 209 

But before Peel and the Duke emancipated the 
Catholics, they first rid their Cabinet of the men who 
believed in Catholic Emancipation. There had been 
from the first constant friction with the Canningites in 
the Cabinet on economic and foreign policy, but the 
final breach came very significantly on a question of 
Parliamentary Reform. The Lords had swallowed the 
Repeal of the Test Act, but they drew the line at 
Lord John Russell's next Bill, which proposed to give 
the two members of Penryn, a borough that had to 
be disfranchised for gross corruption, to the wholly 
unrepresented city of Manchester. In rejecting this 
infinitesimal measure of middle-class enfranchisement 
the Peers did much to provoke in the country the feel- 
ings that soon afterwards carried the Reform Bill. Even 
prudent anti-Reformers like Croker deeply regretted 
the action of the Lords. Now the Canningites, since 
the death of their great leader, were rapidly becoming 
moderate Reformers, and the defiant action of the Upper 
House was more than they could tolerate. Huskisson 
quarrelled with Wellington about Penryn and the similar 
case of East Retford, and resigned from the Cabinet, 
followed by Palmerston, Grant, and Lamb (Melbourne), 
none of whom ever rejoined the Tories. 

The Duke could have kept the Canningites if he 
had wished, for Huskisson regretted his letter of resig- 
nation and wished to recall it. But Wellington, annoyed 
no doubt by the constant bickerings in his Cabinet, 
seized the opportunity to weed out every element of 
Liberalism. Since the Duke chose thus to take his 
stand on the old Toryism alone, he should have done 
everything to keep together the old Tories, in face of a 
ring of enemies, who in Parliament immeasurably sur- 
passed the Government rump in debating power, and 
in the fast moving world outside already outnumbered 
the faithful by ten to one. But after getting rid of the 
Canningites the Duke next proceeded to pass Catholic 
Emancipation ! (March-April 1829). He thus split 



2IO LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

up what was left of the Tories, bitterly alienating from 
his person and government the very elements on which 
he could have most firmly relied to hold the fort against 
the coming Liberal assault. Old Lord Eldon, the Duke 
of Cumberland, the Oxford dons, the country parsons, 
and the more old-fashioned squires raged against the 
King's Government and the victor of Waterloo with 
the fury of men betrayed. The personal attacks on 
the Duke were so fierce that he thought it his duty to 
silence the clamour by calling out Lord Winchilsea 
to exchange shots in Battersea Fields. Not till they 
had pulled down Wellington, and put Lord Grey into 
Downing Street, did the High Tories feel that they had 
been avenged. 

To have forced on a quarrel with the Canningites 
just before he found himself obliged to surrender to 
O'Connell, shows how strictly unpolitical were the 
qualities of this great soldier and public servant. Adminis- 
tration he understood ; when aided by the peculiar 
genius of Peel he could administer the laws better 
perhaps than the Whigs themselves. Legislation as a 
part of administration he understood ; when to pre- 
serve the peace of Ireland he saw that it was necessary 
to emancipate the Catholics, he could sweep down all 
Royal and aristocratic opposition as powerfully as when 
he ordered * everything to go in ' on the evening of 
Waterloo. But politics, the free play of organised 
opinion in a civil community, were always a mystery 
to him. In 1829 he showed as much contempt for 
the Protestant indignation of the squires and parsons 
as he showed in 1830 for the demand of the ' middle 
and industrious classes ' for Parliamentary Reform. 
From the time of the Convention of Cintra onwards, 
he had on every occasion been finely indifferent to what 
any portion of the public would think or say of his action ; 
this soldier's virtue was the ruin of his statesmanship 
in all that he did between 1828 and 1832. 

It would have been not unnatural if the Duke had 



THE CATHOLICS EMANCIPATED 211 

fallen from power directly he had passed Catholic 
Emancipation, as Peel fell directly he had repealed the 
Corn Laws in 1846. The circumstances were not 
dissimilar. But in 1829 George IV was determined 
not to have Grey, and the Whigs had not yet com- 
pletely recovered from their internal divisions. Neither 
was Grey the man to combine with Canningites and 
ultra-Tories to overthrow a Minister whom he respected 
as much as he respected the Duke, because a measure 
had been passed which he regarded as thirty years over- 
due. He would give no signal of attack until a year 
later, when the Duke had defied the Liberals as out- 
rageously as he was now defying the Tories. 

In the constant shifting and obliterating of party 
landmarks and connections during the three years that 
preceded the Reform Bill, one of the permutations and 
combinations most often discussed at Brooks's was 
whether the Duke would ask Grey to enter his Cabinet, 
and if so whether Grey would accept. Even if such 
an union had been made to carry Catholic Emancipation 
— and on no other terms would Grey have looked twice 
at any proposal for office — it would not have lasted 
long, because the difference on foreign policy between 
the two men was fundamental. But if a coalition had 
taken place at all, even for a short while only, it would 
have ruined the fair picture of Grey imprinted on the 
public eye, as the man who had for principle's sake 
rejected office for twenty years past. It was well, 
therefore, that he never joined Wellington ; his high 
personal reputation for disinterested Liberalism was all 
of it needed to save the ship of state amid the breakers 
of popular impatience and rage, during the long crisis 
of the Reform Bill. 

The Duke, when he formed his Government in 
January 1828, and again in January 1829 when he 
was contemplating Emancipation, would have liked to 
ask Grey to join his Cabinet, but on both occasions the 
hostility of George IV prevented the offer from being 



212 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

made. Grey was then neither supporting nor opposing 
Government, and his leadership of the distracted Whig 
party was cold and shadowy. The passing of Catholic 
Emancipation in April 1829 made him feel more 
friendly to Wellington than ever before or after ; pro- 
vided the Catholics were emancipated, he who had 
borne the burden and heat of that long day was devoid 
of jealousy at seeing a rival enter into his labours at 
eventide. But during the course of the next twelve 
months the Duke's reactionary policy abroad, the rising 
question of Parliamentary Reform, and the gradual 
reintegration of the Whig party made the union of 
Wellington and Grey daily more impossible. There 
had never at any time been political correspondence or 
conversation between them, or any negotiations direct 
or indirect. When at length the death of George IV 
(June 1830) removed the Royal obstacle to Grey's 
attainment of office, the Duke had ceased to consider 
Grey eligible, and Grey was in open opposition.^ 

When the year 1830 began, it seemed that * party 
was destroyed in this country,' that the group system 
had become the method of British Parliamentary govern- 
ment, and that administrative opportunism had replaced 
political principle as the guiding star of modern Cabinets. 
But before the year had ended the lists were fairly set 
for the struggle between the two great parties, whose 
rivalry supplied the method of British progress for the 
remainder of the century. This sudden hark-back to 
the party system was caused by the honest intransige- 
ance of the Duke on Foreign Policy and Parliamentary 
Reform ; the two issues were forced to the front over 
here by the second French Revolution, and they were 
the two subjects on which Grey was best fitted to give 
a liberal lead to the Whig party and to the nation at 
large. 

1 See Appendix C, below : ' The question of Grey taking office 
under Wellington, 1 828-1 830.' 



GREY AND ALTHORP 213 

The first step in the new direction was taken in 
March, when some members of the Whig party in the 
Commons, long leaderless,'- chose for themselves a 
spokesman in Lord Althorp. The quiet gathering 
of forty or fifty members who met in his rooms in the 
Albany to induce him to take the lead, was the starting- 
point of Whig-Liberal reunion. Grey had taken no 
part in bringing about the Albany election, which was 
announced to him as 2ifait accompli by a letter of Althorp's ; 
but he had for many years past liked and trusted the 
man now selected as his lieutenant; they had both been 
opposed to the Whig union with Canning, and Grey 
soon came to regard Althorp as the one absolutely indis- 
pensable colleague. The coming together of the two 
men was indeed the most happy chance, the sort of 
chance for want of which parties have gone to pieces 
in 1782 and on other occasions since. Between them 
they commanded the political and personal devotion 
of all the Whigs, and fortunately for the world they were 
both advanced Parliamentary Reformers. In thought, 
feeling, and manner they had so much in common that 
they understood each other completely. Yet Althorp 
supplied all Grey's deficiencies, and filled the gap between 
the somewhat lofty isolation of the veteran nobleman and 
the younger generation of Russells and Whitbreads, 
Macaulays and Bullers, now thronging the floor of the 
House. Everyone could unbosom himself to Althorp. 
And even Brougham dared not challenge the position 
of a man so much his inferior in talents that Campbell 
wrote ' there is a better speaker than Althorp in every 
vestry in England.' Althorp excelled his fellowmen 
in character as Brougham excelled them in talents, 
and in the close quarters of the House character carried 
the day, though in the country at large it was Brougham 

^ Tierney did not die till January 1830, but his leadership had been 
a failure in 1818 (see p. 187, above), and had lapsed without his being 
replaced by anyone else. 



214 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

who did most to raise the great winds of public 
agitation. 

Althorp is one of the most attractive and characteristic 
figures in all our long Parliamentary annals. If a 
foreigner or a present-day Englishman can penetrate the 
secret of Althorp's power, he has the historic gift of under- 
standing the old English character and the political 
system of a bygone age. An aristocrat of the bluest Whig 
blood,^ he was in physical build, in thought and taste, 
akin rather to great squire commoners like Coke of 
Norfolk, too close down to the soil and its tillers to be 
truly described by the word * aristocrat.' He declared 
with obvious truth that he * detested the life of a grandee.' 
He was always trying to escape from London, Parlia- 
ment, office, everything that could keep him from his 
country home. This was a great bond of sympathy 
with Grey. The Master of the Pytchley at the zenith of 
its glory, Althorp had given up fox-hunting once and for 
ever on his wife's death in 1818, because it seemed to 
him wrong to be as happy as he always must be following 
the hounds over hill and dale, while she was lying cold 
in the grave. Her death, though it prevented him from 
being the happiest man in England, made him one of 
the most useful, checking the strain of manly self- 
indulgence in the sportsman, and giving his best energies 
to the public.^ 

But it was among his farmers and their turnips, not 
at Westminster, that he would have greatly preferred 
to serve his country, if God had let him. He read the 
Bible constantly, in simple-hearted search to find his 
duty and the strength to do it. His mind worked so 

1 He died Third Earl Spencer. For the political history of the 
Spencers in the Foxite period, see pp. 106, 133, 144, above. Le 
Marchant's Memoir of Lord Althorp (1876) is a delightful magazine of 
the Whig tradition, as also is the Life of his compeer. Coke of Norfolk. 

2 The squires of Northamptonshire thought that the Master of the 
Pytchley was the greatest of all public servants, and v^^hen he gave up the 
hounds prophesied that he v^^ould never again be so famous. 



THE REFORM MOVEMENT REVIVES 215 

slowly that the constant demands of political leader- 
ship for rapid decisions put upon him a strain almost 
physically painful, and his conscientiousness added the 
tortures of responsibility keenly felt. Yet far cleverer 
men admitted that he excelled them all in coming to 
the right practical conclusion at last, and the very pains 
that his decisions had obviously cost him commended 
such dearly bought treasures of wisdom to his colleagues 
and followers, and sometimes even to his opponents. 
These qualities, set off by a modesty and kindness that 
never once gave way to petulance, reconstituted the Whig 
party in 1830, and in the following year carried the 
Reform Bill through the Lower House. 

As long ago as 18 10 Grey had announced that he 
would not waste time in promoting Parliamentary 
Reform against the King and the estates of the realm 
entrenched for the defence of the old system, until the 
people of England would * seriously and affectionately * 
take up the question for themselves. Then and then 
only, he said, he would act. He had not regarded the 
Radical agitation of 18 17-19 as supplying the needed 
impulse, because it was almost entirely a working-class 
movement, a demand for universal suffrage which 
would have turned the middle classes against it the 
moment it became serious. It had died down under 
the combined influence of repression and better times. 
The middle classes had not taken up Reform * seriously 
and affectionately,' though they had for the most part 
ceased to be Tory. They would unite with the lower 
classes to right the wrongs of Queen Caroline, but not 
their own. Throughout the 'twenties, reforming Whig 
gentry complained that county meetings and other 
organs of ' respectable ' opinion were still lukewarm 
about Reform. It was in the year 1830 that the change 
began, for which Grey, all too patiently perhaps but 
very faithfully, had been waiting as the signal for his 
own action. 



2i6 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

The distress of the country, of which all classes 
were again complaining after a period of prosperity, 
suggested various remedies, to some Currency, to others 
Corn Law repeal ; the most universally agreed upon 
was to relieve taxation by retrenchment and the abolition 
of corrupt pensions and sinecures. But it occurred to 
people who differed more or less widely as to economic 
remedies, that they could all agree on Parliamentary 
Reform as the indispensable prelude to any effective 
change. In January 1830 Thomas Attwood, who had 
Currency fads of his own, had the good sense and bold- 
ness to form the Birmingham Political Union, * to obtain 
by every just and legal means such a reform in the 
Commons' House of Parliament as may ensure a real 
and effectual representation of the lower and middle 
classes of the people in that House.' The Birming- 
ham example was discussed all over the country, and was 
imitated during the spring in a number of other towns 
great and small. The formula of these Political Unions 
was to unite the ' middle and lower classes ' to obtain 
an undefined measure of Parliamentary Reform. 

During these same spring months of 1830 Cobbett 
was riding round the cities and market towns of England, 
preaching Parliamentary Reform as the way to relieve 
the distress of which all classes were complaining. He 
found with delight that at farmers* ordinaries and in 
commercial rooms where he had previously been looked 
at askance, the solid middle class paid him the greatest 
respect and thronged to hear his advice. 

England owes Cobbett a great debt. He had 
obtained a hold on his countrymen at this critical moment 
greater than that of any man or any newspaper, because 
for more than twenty years past, in season and out, in 
spite of persecution and calumny, he had championed 
the wrongs then suffered by the poor at the hands of 
omnipotent privilege. In his * Register ' and other publi- 
cations he had devised and conducted, single-handed, 
a system of political education for the masses, at a time 



^■" 









iK>y., 







Sir F. BURDETT COBBETT • ALTHORP STANLEY 

(standing) 



On the first day of the Reformed Parliament, 1833, Cobbett 

seated himself on the ministerial bench, to the surprise of 

some of its occupants. 



From " H.B." Political Sketches, 



THE NEW KING 217 

when they had no serious political writing within their 
reach. Having now attained to the height of his 
influence at the moment when the national discontent 
was also at its height, he used his authority to preach 
Parliamentary Reform as the preliminary to all other 
redress. He was called a * firebrand ' by both Whigs 
and Tories, but the advice coming from him in 1830 to 
reform Parliament did more to prevent conflagration 
in this country than all the * repressive measures ' that 
ever were passed. 

Such was the state of public feeling when the death 
of George IV on June 26, 1830, and the accession 
of his brother the Duke of Clarence as William IV, 
opened out a new prospect. The Royal veto on a 
"Whig Cabinet and Liberal laws, under which that 
generation had grown up, had vanished in the night, 
not because the constitution had been altered, but 
because a King had ascended the throne who thought 
it his duty to hold the balance evenly between Whigs 
and Tories. A little gauche^ a little eccentric, a little 
stupid, but thoroughly honest, simple, and kind, and 
with no exaggerated ideas of his prerogative, the ' Sailor 
King ' was a great improvement on his two predecessors. 
Hitherto neglected by his fellow-subjects as a man of 
no account, he took a childish pleasure in his sudden 
popularity during the first weeks of his reign. An 
undignified bonhomie led him to walk the streets of 
London unattended, courting the rough enthusiasm of 
the mob ; the people, all agog for signs of political 
change, took it that a ' skipping king ' who * ambled 
up and down ' must be a democrat at heart. The 
delusion thus engendered led to the very general mis- 
understanding of Grey*s slowness about peer-making 
in the later stages of the Reform Bill ; few guessed at 
the difficulties he had with the King, because a wrong 
estimate had been popularly formed of William's 
political views at the moment of his accession. We, 
who know how undemocratic the King really was, can see 



2i8 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

that he treated the Whigs at\d their Bill as well as he 
did only out of an honourable sense of eonstitutional duty 
to his Ministers, whieh George III had never felt. He 
had no personal preference for the AVhigs as a party or 
for Grey as a man, and liked Wellington n\ueh better 
than George IV had done.^ 

On the second dav of the new reign Grey said to 
his son Howick, * that the Duke of Wellington has made 
the best use of the opportunity afforded him by the 
protracted illness of the late King to gain the confidence 
of the present one, and that there is no probability of a 
change of government unless it should be occasioned 
by its extreme weakness in Parliament.' In the same 
conversation Grey told Howick that he had ' a short 
time asfo * received an otFer from Huskisson on behalf 
of the Canningites of an alliance with the WHiigs to turn 
out the Duke and form a joint Cabinet under Grey as 
Premier ; to this Grey had replied that although the 
time was not vet come for an alliance in form, * he had 
no indisposition towards Huskisson and his triends, 
but that on the contrary he was quite ready to act with ^j 
them when the occasion should offer.' ^ On Jiine 30 
Grey made in the House of Lords a declaration of war 
against the Government. 

Such was the state of parties, when the general | 
election necessitated by the new reign took place at the I 
end of July and the beginning of August 1830. Two 
out of three sections of the Torv party were hostile to 

^ See Ellonborough's D.\:r\\ ii. 28;;. :8o, 43 S : 'I consider the 
death oi' the Kiiig one ot" the tortunate events which have often Siived 
the Duke ot" ^^*ellington ; I really do not know how we [the Wellington 
Ministry] could have gone on had he lived two months ' (June 27, 
18^0). But George would never have sent for Grey, or allowed the 
Reibrm Bill to be introduced as a Government measure. 

• Lord Howick's ycuf-nn/, ]\me 27, 1830. Grey had in the past 
disliked Huskisson, and had once, under provocation, written of him, in 
januarv 1828, as " that rogue Huskisson.' But Howick's journal makes 
it clear that Huskisson would in all probability have been in Grey's 
Cabinet if he had lived till November. 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1830 219 

the Government, the Canninirites in almost open league 
with the Whigs, and the High Tories sulking in their 
tents to revenge themselves on the Duke for Catholic 
Emancipation. But for the fact that borough-owners 
had more to say to the returns than the public at large, 
an immense Whig majority would have been secured. 
The * open ' seats in town and country were almost all 
carried by the Opposition. Reform was the popular 
cry, and on that and the abolition of negro slavery 
Brougham was, by the help of Wilberforce's friends, 
returned for the greatest of English constituencies, 
although he had no local connections with Yorkshire. 
The event was regarded by all England as a herald of 
coming change.^ 

While the elections were still only beginning, news 
came from France which more than doubled the popular 
enthusiasm for Reform. In the * days of July ' (28-30) 
the mob of Paris had defeated the soldiers and over- 
thrown the reactionary monarchy of the Bourbons. 
The tricolour once more floated over France and the 
keystone of the arch of the Holy Alliance had been 
removed. 

Charles X and his minister Polignac had provoked 
their own downfall by illegally suspending the Constitu- 
tion. Even Lord Eldon and Sir Walter Scott had 
disapproved of their action, which placed Charles X in 
the moral position of our James II, and led him straight 
to the same fate. The Revolution, though the fighting 
had been done by workmen, was not permitted to turn 
' red,' but solidified round Lafayette, the National 
Guard, and the bourgeois King Louis Philippe. It 
could not therefore be denounced, however much it 

^ The enormous expenses of a Yorkshire election, that had been the 
undoing of many great landowners who had fought for the blue ribbon 
of English electioneering, were, of course, defrayed by Brougham's 
supporters, not by himself. As the Duke of Wellington said about it, 
' No gentleman could bear the expense. The middle classes had it all 
to themselves ' {Ellenborough, ii. 329). 



220 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

might be regretted, by English Tories. It could not, 
like the Revolutions of 1789 and 1848, be used to 
conjure up 'old panic' over here ; 1830 still stands 
as the one occasion in all the ages when the French set a 
political example that influenced us otherwise than by- 
repulsion. Its first and smallest effect was to increase 
the number of seats carried by the Opposition in the 
General Election of August. 

Its real importance was that it gave EngHshmen the 
sense of living in a new era, when great changes could 
safely be effected. To act boldly on behalf of the people, 
it was seen, did not produce anarchy as the Tories had 
argued ever since 1789 ; it was half measures that were 
dangerous, and resistance to the people that was fatal. 
Our middle-classes saw the bourgeoisie safely governing 
France, and blushed that in England they themselves 
were still subject to the aristocracy. The working men 
saw that the ouvriers had defeated the army in fair fight, 
and the word went round that what Frenchmen had 
done Englishmen could do. At every crisis in the next 
two years, at Wellington's fall in November, at the 
various stages of conflict over the Reform Bill culminat- 
ing in * the days of May,' a resort to arms was at the 
back of all men's minds on account of this new French 
Revolution, and formed an integral part of the plans of 
popular leaders like Place and Attwood, as the last 
remedy to be appHed if Grey should fail to win the 
nation's rights by constitutional means. The know- 
ledge that Englishmen were so thinking and that French- 
men had so acted gravely affected the politics of the 
propertied class as a whole, and of not a few of the 
borough owners themselves. The recollection of Paris, 
and the knowledge that everyone else was recollecting 
Paris, drove them to make concessions they would never 
have dreamt of two years before. 

It was under the influence of the joyful news from 
France and of the Whig victories at the General Election, 
that Grey in the late summer of 1830 entered into closer 



AFTER THE GENERAL ELECTION 221 

political correspondence with Holland, with Lambton 
(recently become Viscount Durham by creation of the 
Goderich Ministry), and with his other old political 
friends. Only Brougham kept half apart, and was sus- 
pected at Howick, rightly or wrongly, of intriguing with 
the Canningites and others to get the lead of the Opposi- 
tion parties for himself. The Greys all declared that the 
Yorkshire election had turned his head. Durham did 
his best to act as peacemaker, and to prevent a com- 
plete breach between his father-in-law and Brougham.^ 
The subjects privately discussed between the Whig 
leaders in August, September, and October were, as 
their letters show, alliance with the Canningites, absorp- 
tion of Stanley and Sir James Graham in the party, the 
overthrow of the Duke's Ministry, the reversal of his 
foreign policy and the preparation of a Reform Bill — 
in fact all that actually took place when Parliament met 
in November. 

When Huskisson, who was negotiating on behalf 
of the Canningites, was killed in the famous railway 
accident, Grey wrote to Holland (September 19, 1830), 
' I never was more shocked than at the account of poor 
Huskisson's death and at the dreadful manner of it. 
I had not a good opinion of his political integrity, nor 
could I have trusted him without securities ; but he 
might have been most useful at this moment, and I feel 
that the public has sustained a great loss.' Palmerston, 

1 Durham's letters to Grey, Aug., Sept., Oct. 1830. On Oct. 4 
he writes : ' I do not believe Brougham's activity originates in a desire 
to make himself leader, but in extreme anxiety to overthrow the present 
Government.' Durham adds that Stanley and Graham have joined 
the Whigs on the express understanding that Grey is ' at the head.' 
' I know your ladies [Lady Grey and daughters] are no friends of 
Brougham's. I wish to keep everything as smooth as possible ; he is 
am extraordinary man, diiBcult to manage as an ally from the wild eccen- 
tricities of his genius, and dangerous to an almost fatal degree as an enemy.' 
On October 28, 1830, Grey's brother-in-law, Edward EUice, wrote to 
him : ' I see on all sides great jealousy of Brougham's assumption of the 
office of leader, great distrust of his prudence and intentions.' 



222 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Melbourne, and Grant, having twice in three years lost 
a renowned leader of their small party by premature 
death, were less than ever willing to stultify themselves 
by joining Wellington, though he kept making offers 
to them to come into his tottering Ministry.^ Under 
the influence of the new era, they as well as Graham and 
Stanley were steadily moving towards union with the 
Whigs, on the basis of a moderate Reform. 

Meanwhile Grey and his family were seeing to it 
that the coming Reform should not be too * moderate.' 
The account in the Memoirs of the 3rd Earl of 
Malmesbury of his visit as a very young man to 
Howick in the late summer of 1830, throws a vivid 
light on things public and private : 

My father-in-law. Lord Tankerville, was an old Whig, 
and a friend of Lord Grey, and he took me on a visit to Howick, 
where the old Earl lived in patriarchal retirement amidst his 
numerous family. Two of the latter, Lord Durham and Mr. 
Ellice (commonly called ' Bear Ellice '),2 both clever and ambitious 
men, had great influence with Lord Grey, and used it without 
mercy. He was one of the most striking figures I ever saw, 
the very type of a grand seigneur and of an intellectual man. 
Whilst I was at Hovv^ick I was struck with two peculiarities of 
the family, one of which was that all the sons and daughters 
called their parents by their Christian names, ' Charles ' and 
' Mary,' which had a strange effect ; the other was the taste of 
the whole family for argument. They were always in a state 
of discussion, even as to the distance between Howick and 
Alnwick, and the shortest road to and from each, which one 
would suppose they had verified long ago. Lady Georgiana 
was very agreeable, and played beautifully on the harp — an 
instrument then much appreciated. As I suppose I was then 
looked upon as a mere boy by the party, politics and future 

1 In July, and again at the end of September, and again near the 
end of October ; see Palmerston, Life, i. 381-3. 

2 He became Whig Whip on the formation of Grey's Government 
in November ; had married Grey's sister Hannah in 1 809 ; v^^as called 
' Bear Ellice ' on account of his connection with the North- West fur 
trade ; himself, he was very unlike a bear. See Appendix G, below, 
* Bear Ellice.' 



SCHEMES FOR A REFORM BILL 223 

onslaughts on the Tory Government were freely spoken of 
without gSne in my presence ; and I remember one day Lord 
Grey breaking out and declaring that the greatest rascals in the 
world were Lord Castlereagh (then dead), Brougham, and 
Talleyrand, and I recollect this explosion the more because 
when he formed his Government three months later he was 
obliged to make Brougham his Chancellor, and to receive 
Talleyrand as Ambassador of France.^ 

Ellice and Lord Durham were often at Chillingham [Lord 
Tankerville's seat, a dozen miles from HowickJ, and their talk, 
of course, was chiefly as to the coming change, and of the re- 
arrangement of the boroughs and franchise, their great object 
being to ' cook ' them (as they themselves called it), so as to 
expel as much as possible all local interests belonging to Tories. 

The young man had clearly overheard fragments 
of talk as to the scope and principle of the Reform Bill 
that Grey, Durham, and Ellice hoped soon to bring in, 
and his recollections are evidence that the course of 
England's political history was to no small extent mapped 
out at Howick two or three months before the Duke 
fell. But it is pertinent to remark, as regards the charge 
of ' cooking,' that the disfranchisement clauses of the 
Bill actually introduced were not arbitrary but went 
on the principle of taking away members from all 
boroughs, whether Whig or Tory owned, of less than 
a specific number of inhabitants ; the Tories indeed 
suffered most, because they held most rotten boroughs.^ 

^ See, however, p. 374, below. Appendix B, for a more favour- 
able dictum on Castlereagh ; Grey got on very well with Talleyrand, 
and liked dealing with him, though he always declared he had no 
' confidence ' in him. 

* E.g. Lady Grey's letter to her daughter Caroline, on March 4, 
1 83 1 : ' The Tories are furious, and naturally people dislike losing their 
boroughs. The D. of Devonshire loses five, yet most handsomely 
supports the bill. Lord Fitzwilliam loses Malton and Higham Ferrers 
— the latter place deprives Henry [Lord Howick] of his seat.' 

In 1827 Croker wrote to Canning that there were 203 seats in the 
Commons ' in the hands of what may be called the Tory aristocracy,' 
while ' the Whig seats are about 73.' 



224 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

No doubt this made the principle doubly attractive 
to a shrewd Whig whip, but the extinction of the 
rotten boroughs was also the principle on which 
the British people had set its heart with fierce 
determination. 

The French Revolution of July not only forced on 
the domestic crisis in England, but created a European 
crisis of which the English Reform Bill was the turning- 
point, just as the English Revolution of 1688 was the 
turning-point of the European resistance to Louis XIV. 
If Wellington had not fallen in November 1830, and 
if the High Tory party had not been for ever destroyed 
by the Reform Bill, it is probable that England would 
soon have been fighting side by side with her old allies 
of the Holy Alliance against revolutionary France, to 
the indefinite postponement of Constitutional Reform 
in our island. This danger was averted partly by 
resolute action of the British people, and partly by 
Grey's cool and steady liberalism in home and foreign 
affairs. 

The danger was first made acute by the Belgian 
Revolution in the autumn of 1830. Imitating the mob 
of Paris, Brussels at the end of August drove out the 
Dutch garrison, and the other Belgian cities followed 
suit. Belgium forcibly asserted her independence of 
Holland, to whom after Napoleon's fall she had been 
unnaturally united by the Treaties of Vienna. For the 
second time in two months the Holy Alliance had been 
defied, and although Prussia, Austria, and Russia had 
shrunk from challenging the right of the French people 
to self-determination, they had no such scruples about 
Belgium. It was the desire of the Eastern powers to 
put down the Belgian Revolution in accordance with 
alleged obligations under the Treaties of Vienna. It 
was the equally clear intention of the new French 
Government to fight if necessary to protect Belgian 
independence, and how much of Belgian independence 



THE BELGIAN REVOLUTION, 1830 225 

would be left when France had done fighting for it was 
a question which made even Grey and English Liberals 
anxious. Wellington's sympathies were all against 
the new France and against the revolt of the Belgian 
people. Though he and his Foreign Minister, Aberdeen, 
were desirous of keeping the peace, it is highly unlikely 
that he would have been able to do so, if he had continued 
in office, holding the views he did and surrounded by 
people who would have been only too glad * to busy 
giddy minds with foreign quarrels.' ^ Even Grey and 
Palmerston, who were thoroughly * Liberal ' in their 
attitude to France and Belgium, found it, when they 
came in, all they could do to reach a peaceful solution, 
for the French were none too reasonable. It is not 
possible to suppose that the Duke could have avoided 
war. 

Grey's liberalism as regards the Belgian question 
was part of a general scheme of European polity inherited 
from Fox, always shared by Lord Holland and now 
endorsed by the whole Whig party and by the great 
majority of the British people. As early as September 3 
he had stated fully the principles on which he afterwards 
acted as Minister, in a letter to his friend and would-be 
Egeria, the busy and agreeable Princess Lieven, wife 
of the Russian ambassador. She was an agent of the 
Czardom in Western Europe, and her views, highly 

^ ' Whether the Belgians intend to assert their independence, or 
whether they throw in their lot with France, in the one case as in the 
other, you will be forced to make war. At any rate such is the language 
held by the people about the Ministers, and they add that this will be 
the best means of rallying the old Tory party round the Government.' — 
Princess Lieven to Grey, September 6, 1830. 

No one who reads the debate in the Lords on Jan. 26, 1832, in 
which Wellington and Aberdeen attacked the whole course of the Belgian 
Revolution and the whole of Grey's treatment of it in 1831, can doubt 
that if Wellington and Aberdeen had continued in power the question 
would in their hands have led to war. Aberdeen on that occasion said 
that the Belgian revolt was the most ' senseless ' and ' unintelligible ' in 
' the history of the world.' 



226 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

reactionary on all save Turkish questions, made no 
difference to Grey's friendship with her and none at 
all to his policy and action, as she discovered to her 
surprise and chagrin when he had fairly come into 
office.^ 

Dearest Princess [he wrote on September 3, when the first 
news of the Brussels revolution arrived], I have never yet known 
a popular revolution that might not be ascribed to provocation 
on the part of the Government, more or less remote. Ce rCest 
jamais par env'ie d'attaquer^ mats par impatience de souffrir^ que 
le peuple se souleve, is an observation as old as Sully, which all 
history will verify. That the example of France will give 
encouragement to the people in different countries, who suffer 
from the same oppression, to wish for a similar relief, cannot be 
doubted. But the security against this is not to be found in 
armies and Holy Alliances. The experiment of the fatal policy 
pursued in what is called the settlement of Europe at the general 
peace, if Governments ever Could be taught wisdom, would 
afford a salutary lesson ; and instead of prompting them to 
measures for putting down public opinion by force, show them 
the necessity of setting to work to put their houses in order in 
time. You speak of a guarantee of the Netherlands ; I cannot 

1 The three volumes of correspondence between Lord Grey and 
the Princess (1890) must be studied alongside of the Princess's other 
letters, edited hy Lionel Robinson (1902), which show her in a less 
amiable light behind the scenes. Her reactionary hatred of England 
as the home of freedom, carefully concealed in her letters to Grey, comes 
out in those to her brother {e.g. p. 350, Robinson, Sept. 1833). To 
Grey she does not seem to have been more treacherous than a woman of 
her diplomatic occupation must necessarily be, though she writes to her 
brother in November 1831 : 'If Grey should learn that I repeat to you 
what he tells me he will never again give me his confidence.' And after 
a tirade against England, in August 1833, ' Ah ! our good Russia, how 
much better is she governed ! Of the Ministers I have as yet only 
seen Lord Grey, and I am sending my report to my chief.' After think- 
ing when Grey first took office that she could ' manage ' him, and finding 
she could not in the least, her final sad opinion of him (Jan. 1832) is that 
* under the most haughty and aristocratic manners he is a thorough 
democrat.' For a letter of Lady Grey's about her, see p. 376, Appendix 
C, below. 



GREY ON THE TURK 227 

find in any of my books of reference here the treaty which 
contains it. 

A fortnight later he writes to her : 

I think a case for interference, under the conditions of the 
Treaty [of Vienna] might be made out if it was our interest to 
interfere. But I see nothing to make that interference, as you 
seem to think, a matter of necessity. 

On one subject only the Princess and Grey were in 
agreement — the Turkish question, wherein the Russian 
Court pursued a policy of liberation. On that subject 
Grey and Holland had been brought up in the ideas 
which Fox had first advocated in his opposition to 
Pitt's policy in 1791.-^ After thirty years* abeyance, the 
problem of Turkish misrule had been again brought 
to the front by the revolt of Greece in 1821. In 
November of that year Grey wrote to Holland : 

My politics with respect to Greece and Turkey are line for 
line the same as yours ; they are the same that I learnt from 
your uncle in 1791, and all subsequent reflection has confirmed 
me in them. I quite agree with you that the danger arising 
from the extension of the Russian power and influence on that 
side ^ is so remote and contingent as to bear no degree of com- 
parison with the certain evil of the existence of the Turkish 
Empire. 

Again, on February 10, 1826, he writes to Holland : 

It seems likely that a Turkish War will be resorted to by 
Russia as the most effectual diversion for a discontented army. 
In that case I shall strictly adhere to the lesson I learnt from your 
uncle : the expulsion of the Turks from Europe, quocumque 
modo, I shall think a great good. I am much less afraid of the 
extension of the Russian Empire on that side than towards 

* See pp. 26-27, above. 

* The other side would be towards Poland and Germany. Grey 
was strongly in sympathy with the Poles, as Princess Lieven was always 
bitterly complaining. 



22 8 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Germany, and any extension will in all likelihood only accelerate 
the division of that unwieldy and enormous mass. At all events 
the establishment of an independent Government in Greece may 
afford us a means of providing a barrier towards the Mediterranean. 

It will be seen that this doctrine goes much further 
than the liberation of Greece ; it covers the total expul- 
sion of the Turks from Europe. If this policy had been 
inherited by Palmerston, Russell, and the Whig leaders 
who succeeded Grey and Holland,^ we should have been 
spared forty years of ' backing the wrong horse,' of 
maintaining Turkish rule in the Balkans and Armenia, 
and the costly expiation of Disraeli's * peace with honour ' 
on the heights of Gallipoli. 

In the 'twenties and early 'thirties, Liberal sentiment, 
whether led by Canning or by Grey, was solidly anti- 
Turk, because the classical sentiment for ancient Greece, 
sanctified by Byron's death, was stronger than fears of 
Russia. But when once Greece had been set free, and 
the issue had shifted to the fate of those * barbarian * 
Christians buried in the Balkan Peninsula and in 
Armenia, who could not boast the magic name of Hellas, 
the majority of British Liberals forgot the tradition of 
the elders and the doctrine of Fox and Grey, as to the 
monstrosity of Turkish rule.^ 

Grey, though strongly pro-Greek, had erred in feeling 
no enthusiasm for the destruction of the Turkish fleet 
in Navarino in November 1827, because he thought it 
would be followed by our desertion of the Greeks on 
land, and would only provoke worse Turkish reprisals 
at their expense. Fortunately, France and Russia con- 

1 Brougham, too, was in favour of the complete expulsion of the 
Turks from Europe. See his letter to Wilson on Navarino, B.M., 
Add. MSS., 30,115 : ' I am for seeing the Turk out of Europe.' Lord 
Holland, on Sept. 22, 1829, writes to Grey : ' You see the peace is all 
but made, and Constantinople has once more (I trust for the last time) 
escaped its inevitable fate. I rejoice at the first, and am sorry for the 
last event.' 

2 Grey somewhat modified his own views later, see p. 355, below. 



THE BOUNDARIES OF GREECE 229 

tinued to protect the Greeks and this did not occur. 
Wellington, however, who came into office at this junc- 
ture (January 1828), reversed Canning's liberal policy 
in the Levant as elsewhere, and lent all the weight of 
England to protect Turkey and reduce the boundaries of 
the new Greek kingdom to the smallest possible limits. 
He wished to confine Greece to the Morea, and to leave 
Athens itself in Turkish hands 1 Here he was opposed 
by France and Russia, who, though reactionary, never 
forgot that they were Christian Powers. 

While this diplomatic contest over the limits of the 
new Greek kingdom, so discreditable to British state- 
craft, was going on in Paris, Grey wrote from Howick 
on September 9, 1829, to his own and Fox's old friend 
Adair, who was then in Paris ; in this letter Grey 
suggested a possible compromise between the generous 
Arta-Volo boundary desired by France and Russia, 
which Grey himself thought right, and the impossible 
Morea boundary urged by Wellington. Adair read 
Grey's letter to Pozzo di Borgo, the Russian Ambassador 
to France, who laid it before his disputing colleagues 
at the conference. They accepted * Lord Grey's 
boundaries ' as a comprom^ise, but one distinctly favour- 
able to Greece.^ ' I little thought,' Grey wrote to 
Holland, * that living here at the bottom of Northum- 
berland I should be marking out the limits of new 
Kingdoms.' 

Grey made it clear to Adair ^ that he had only suggested 

^ The ' Grey boundaries ' ran from Zeitoum, at the mouth of the 
Sperchius, to the mouth of the Achelous, hy a fairly straight line along 
the mountain tops. See F.O. 32 (Greece), vol. xvi., 'protocol No. i 
de la conference au Foreign Office, le 3 fevrier, 1830.' This gave 
Greece command of Attica, Euboea, and the Straits of Lepanto, all of 
which Wellington had wished to take away from her. The F.O. Papers 
for 1829-30 entirely bear out the correspondence of Grey with Adair, 
Holland, and Princess Lieven as to the ' Grey boundaries.' 

' Letters of Sept. 9, 1829, and Feb. 19, 1830. Grey's letter to 
Adair of September 9 is repeated almost word for word in the middle of 
his letter to Princess Lieven of Sept. 14 (Lieven Letters, i. 292-3). 



230 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

this compromise in order to save Greece from being 
confined to the Morea as Wellington wished. He 
himself would have preferred the larger latitude of the 
Arta-Volo boundary. And indeed so slow are the ways 
of diplomacy that when he came into office at the end 
of 1830 he was still in time to bid Palmerston tear up 
* the Grey boundaries,' and insist upon the Arta-Volo 
frontier which Wellington had opposed on behalf of 
England only a year before. Thanks to Grey's intelli- 
gent and active interest in the Greek question, the 
Arta-Volo line became the boundary of the new state 
until the addition of Thessaly in 1881.^ 

All these issues, foreign and domestic, were to be 
decided, after the good old EngHsh fashion, at the 
assembling of the newly elected Parliament. In the 
last days of October 1830 Grey came up to London for 
the session, and on this occasion Lady Grey came with 
him. The even tenor of their life at Howick, so little 
disturbed for a generation past, was at length cut shoi^: 
for a few eventful years. What thoughts were in his 
mind, as he posted up to London by the long North 
road he had so often traversed in the bitter days gone 
by, cheered only by the thought of Fox's welcome at 
the end ? That loved voice had long been silent, and 
the ' young ones ' were white-haired Nestors among a 
new generation of men ; was it possible that at this 
eleventh hour he and Holland would be called upon to 
carry out their leader's whole political testament, on 
the strength of a prodigious national revulsion against 
all that had happened in England in the last forty years ? 

^ See F.O. 65 (Russia), vol. 184, Palmerston 's letter to Lord Heytes- 
bury, Dec. 31, 1830 : — 'There has now been a change in the Govern- 
ments of England and France ; changes of men have produced changes 
of opinion and of feeling in this matter ' of the Greek boundaries ; so 
the Arta-Volo boundary is now^ desired by England. See also F.O. 65, 
vol. 191, letter of Lord Heytesbury, Jan. 19, 183 1, and Palmerston to 
Heytesbury, Sept. 21, 1831, for the continuance of the negotiation. 



*A TIDE IN THE AFFAIRS OF MEN* 231 

If so, in the words of the quotation that was now often 
on his Hps : 

Non adeo has exosa manus victoria fugit 
Ut quicquam tanta pro spe tentare recusam.i 

For Tory and Radical, friend and foe, who thought, not 
without excuse, that the old man was a disillusioned 
valetudinarian who had left his reforming faith and his 
political activity far behind him on the road of life, a 
strange surprise was in store. When after little more 
than three years he returned to Howick, never again 
to be drawn from his * private gardens,' he had by 
' industrious valour ' realised the dream of his youth, 

And cast the Kingdoms old 
Into another mould. 



^ ' Grudging victory has not so much deserted these hands of mine, 
that I should refuse to try something for so great a hope ' {Aen. xi. 
436—7). He several times in the 'twenties quotes this passage in letters 
to his sons and to Holland. 



BOOK III 
THE REFORM BILL 

CHAPTER I 

FALL OF WELLINGTON FORMATION OF THE GREY 

MINISTRY DIFFICULTIES OF THE FIRST MONTHS 

NOVEMBER 183O TO FEBRUARY 1 83 1 

* What struggling confusion, as the issue slowly draws on ; and the 
doubtful Hour, with pain and blind struggle, brings forth its Certainty, 
never to be abolished ! ' — Carlyle, Fr. Rev. vi. 6. 

When, in the last days of October 1830, the Greys 
arrived in town for the opening of the new ParHament, 
they stepped into a scene of mere confusion. All was 
in flux, nothing certain except that things could not go 
on as before. There was no clear majority in the new 
House against Wellington, still less in favour of Grey. 
In pre-Reform Bill times many members came up to a 
new Parliament unpledged, having been chosen to repre- 
sent not principles or parties, but places and persons. 
And even the action of the organised groups was still 
uncertain. The High Tories sulked apart, scarcely 
knowing their own secret, whether they would carry 
their vengeance against the Duke to the length of the 
fatal division lobby. As to the Canningites and un- 
attached moderates, they had decided that there must 
be a Reform Bill ; but that might mean much or little, 

233 



234 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

and if it meant little it was still thought that the Duke 
might supply them with what they demanded. In the 
first two days of November, before the King's speech, the 
unattached Stanley and Graham were taken into consulta- 
tion by Althorp and Brougham, and were by them asked 
to consult the Canningites, as to the scope that should be 
given to Brougham's famous Reform motion, intended 
to unite the Liberal vote in the House.^ But at the 
very same time (November i), Littleton, purporting to 
speak on behalf of Stanley, Graham, and the Canningites, 
was telling the Government agents that if the Duke 
would reconstruct his Ministry and bring in a Reform 
Bill to enfranchise a few big towns, he should have the 
support of all moderate men.^ It was for the Duke to 
choose ; if it had been for Peel to choose, history might 
have had another tale to tell. 

Next morning, on that famous 2nd of November, 
when the King's speech would reveal the Duke's decision, 
the Greys still thought it possible that he might save 
himself by declaring for Reform.^ After all, since he 
had yielded up his own convictions to the will of the 
Irish people, why should he hold the English at a cheaper 
rate ? And if he would but make the necessary show 
of concession, men like Palmerston and Melbourne 

^ Parker's Graham, i. 96-7. 

2 Parker's Peel, ii: 163-7. 

3 On Nov. 2 Lady Grey writes to her daughter Caroline : ' Car 
has had a dreadful cold, but he is so much better to-day he is going 
to the H. of Lords [where he drew the Duke's famous declaration 
against Reform that afternoon]. Yesterday I heard that the D. of W.'s 
friends were very low indeed. On the other hand there is a report, 
but mind it is but a report, that the Duke says that tho' he does not 
himself approve of Reform, he is ready to yield to the wish of the nation 
if it is proved to be in favour of it. That means that he will do anything 
rather than resign, and this has all along been my belief ! ' 

On Oct. 17, before leaving Howick, Grey had written to Holland : 
' If Parliamentary Reform is proposed by Government, which I can 
hardly believe, tho' I have strong evidence, independently of yours, 
that it has been in contemplation, I must be found in the ranks of its 
supporters.' 



THE KING'S SPEECH, NOV. 1830 235 

would much prefer a sham Reform Bill to such a real 
one as Grey was nursing in his heart. 

The events in the House of Lords that afternoon 
(November 2) decided the question. The King's speech 
contained no allusion to Reform, and raised instead 
the Belgian question in these ominous words : 

I have witnessed with deep regret the state of affairs in the 
Low Countries. I lament that the enlightened administration 
of the King should not have preserved his dominions from revolt. 
. . . I am endeavouring in concert with my allies to devise 
such means of restoring tranquillity as may be compatible with 
the welfare and good government of the Netherlands and with 
the future security of other States. 

Grey had come into the House not knowing what he 
should hear ; but he at once challenged the Duke on 
both points. As to the Netherlands, he complained 
that by the words of the speech ' we are made to 
decide between the two parties and to pronounce a 
direct censure on the conduct of the people of the Low 
Countries towards their enlightened government. This 
is language directly opposed to the principle of non- 
interference ! ' As to domestic affairs, the dangers of 
the time, said Grey, could only be met by ' securing 
the affections of our fellow subjects, by redressing their 
grievances, and — my Lords, I will pronounce the word — 
by reforming Parliament.* 

Then the Duke rose to reply. He attempted to 
explain away the language of the speech as regards 
Belgium, and declared himself desirous of co-operating 
with France in the settlement of the question. But the 
words of the King's speech rather than his explanation 
of them left their effect upon the nation, and during the 
fortnight that followed Attwood and Place concerted 
measures for a middle-class movement to refuse the 
payment of taxes, if the Government drifted any further 
towards war.^ 

^ Wallas's Place, ed. 1898, pp. 247, 251, and note. 



2 36 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

It was the last part of the Duke's speech that attracted 
the attention of all England. In answer to Grey's 
challenge on Reform, he declared : 

The Legislature and the system of representation possessed 
the full and entire confidence of the country. I will go still 
further, and say that if at the present moment I had imposed 
upon me the duty of forming a legislature for a country like this 
in possession of great property of various descriptions, I do not 
mean to assert that I could form such a legislature as you possess 
now, for the nature of man is incapable of reaching such excel- 
lence at once ; but my great endeavour would be to form some 
description of legislature which would produce the same results. 

He would therefore not bring forward any Reform Bill, 
and he would oppose any brought forward by others. 
On that word he sat down, amid a silence that surprised 
him. Turning to his nearest colleague, Lord Aberdeen, 
he asked, * I have not said too much, have l?^ ' You'll 
hear of it ! * was the reply. 

The Duke had thrown down his glove, and the 
country took up the challenge. Francis Place, who in 
his library at Charing Cross had for many years past kept 
a marvellously accurate barometer of political feeling 
among the different classes of the community, wrote to 
Hobhouse, on November 8, that * the first step in the 
British Revolution * was now being taken. The middle 
classes were furious with the Duke, and determined 
to obtain a sweeping reform. After forty years of 
flunkeyism they were tired of the aristocracy, and had 
come to consider political power to belong of right to 
their own class as the * solid ' and * intelligent * part of 
the community ; and they further believed that Reform 
was the only alternative to a violent revolution in the 
present desperate temper of the working classes. 

This bourgeois political philosophy was making 
converts rapidly among the visitors to Holland House 
and among the groups of excited country gentlemen 
now talking all day and night in Brooks's. An union 



THE WHIGS AND THE MIDDLE-CLASS 237 

of Whig borough-owners and statesmen with the shop- 
keepers and clerks of all England was bodying itself 
forth in many different minds as the only hope for a 
world in agony. It was to prove the stable basis of the 
early Victorian era ; but in 1830 the middle class, out 
for its rights against the Tory aristocracy, was molten 
lava, a revolutionary flood. And below that again 
roared the flames of a fiercer, deeper gulf of revolt, the 
desperation of starving peasants and operatives. What 
if that force of the unplumbed abyss, so potent for 
destruction, could be harnessed instead to work the 
engine of a middle-class revolution ? If it was a real 
revolution, however middle-class, the thing might be 
done — not otherwise. And therefore a really big 
Reform Bill might be the most conservative as well 
as the most liberal of all measures. Such had been 
Grey's private thought for ten years past, and now a 
great body of respectable opinion, under the influence 
of something like panic, was coming to the same view.^ 
There was indeed ground for alarm. ' The aristo- 
cracy rolls in wealth and luxury,' notes the Russian 
ambassadress, 'while the streets of London and the 
highways of the country swarm with miserable creatures 
covered with rags, barefooted, having neither food nor 
shelter.' Noble lords coming up to town from their 
estates report that labourers have been found lying four 
together under the hedges, dead of starvation. In 

^ See p. 183, above, and Appendix A, below. In the winter of 
1 830-1 Grey wrote to the Knight of Kerry: 'A great change has 
taken place in all parts of Europe since the end of the war in the distri- 
bution of property, and unless a corresponding change be made in the 
legal mode by which that property , can act upon the governments, 
revolutions must necessarily follow. This change requires a greater 
influence to be yielded to the middle classes, who have made wonderful 
advances both in property and intelligence, and this influence may be 
beneficially exerted upon the Government by improvements in the 
representative system. Without some such concessions the change 
alluded to will lead rapidly to republicanism and the destruction of 
established institutions.' 



238 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Kent and Sussex the peasants, not wishing to lie dead 
under the hedges, have risen and are marching about 
the countryside unresisted, demanding a Hving wage of 
half-a-crown a day. Threshing machines are destroyed, 
and all over southern England ricks are fired nightly 
in the name of * Captain Swing,' that dark abstraction 
of the people's despair and vengeance. In the industrial 
North the New Trades Unionism prevents spasmodic 
outbreaks, but prepares for an organised struggle with 
the troops on the French model. The armed force in 
the country is very small and no Ministry dare propose 
the expense of increasing it. Men who have aught to 
lose clamour to Government to save society, by conces- 
sion, if there is yet time. Since the Duke will not, Grey 
must. All eyes are turned to him. So passes the first 
fortnight of November, the storm rising daily — who 
will ride it .'' 

On November 7, 1830, Wellington's Government, 
doomed since his declaration against Reform, took 
another step towards the brink. It had been arranged 
that the King was to visit the City in state on Lord 
Mayor's day. By * the boldest act of cowardice,' the 
visit was countermanded because, though there v/as no 
fear of an attack on the King, the Duke himself was so 
unpopular that serious disorders would ensue when he 
showed himself beside his sovereign. Home Secretary 
Peel was forced to confess as much to a shouting House. 
Never was there such a theme for Parliamentary eloquence 
hunting an unpopular Government to its death. The 
image of a distressed King, longing to come down like 
a father among his people, but held aloof in his palace 
by hated viziers, was a pleasantly new motif for Whig 
indignation and for popular sentiment. 

After the Duke's declaration against all reform, 
any thought of the Canningites and Moderates joining 
the Government had come to an end. Littleton, who 
the day before had made the proposal for a junction with 
Wellington, now became a Whig for life, and Palmerston 



FALL OF WELLINGTON 239 

and Melbourne with him. Stanley and Graham, more 
advanced and zealous reformers than these Canningites, 
also became Whigs, though not for ever. It was de- 
termined to combine and throw the Government out ; 
if nothing else turned up first, then let it be on Brougham's 
motion for Reform, which had been drawn on * moderate * 
lines, to attract as many votes as possible in the House. 
It was therefore less thorough than the Government 
Reform Bill of the following year, which was drawn up 
on the opposite principle of winning such support in the 
country as to overawe ' moderate ' opinion in the House. 
Brougham would only have proposed to disfranchise 
the rotten boroughs to the extent of one out of two 
seats apiece.^ It was fortunate that he did not have a 
chance of bringing forward his scheme, for he was then 
regarded as the popular standard-bearer of the cause, 
and if once he had come out for so limited a measure. 
Grey could not have produced next year a Bill very much 
more radical. But the stars in their courses were fight- 
ing for the complete destruction of the old order. 
Brougham's motion was down for November 16, and 
on November 1 5 the Government was defeated. 

The cou-p de grace came on a vote for further enquiry 
into the Civil List proposals of the Ministry, carried 
by 233 to 204. All sections of Liberals, now united as 
a Whig party, voted together against the Government. 
Some of the High Tories, to sate their revenge on the 
Duke for Catholic Emancipation, had, like Wetherell, 
abstained ; while others, like Knatchbull and Vyvyan, 
actually voted against the Ministry, though they would 
not have voted next day for Brougham's Reform pro- 
posals.^ They were to repent at leisure. 

1 Parker's Graham, i. 96; Brougham, Memoirs, iii. 523. 

2 Ellenborough, ii. 439. It was presumably for this reason that 
Brougham was so exceedingly anxious to defeat the Government on the 
15th (see Hansard, November 1830, p. 548, note). There would be 
less certainty of defeating the Government on Reform next evening, as 
no Tories would vote for Reform. 



240 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Even so the majority was not great. But in the 
then state of the country it was enough. The Duke, 
fearing lest Brougham's motion should be * carried by 
storm ' on the following evening, resigned in the morn- 
ing to forestall it, and to put the Reform question in 
the hands of ' responsible ministers ' like Grey.^ He 
little thought that he was thereby giving his rival the 
opportunity to introduce a Government measure far 
more extensive than Brougham's dreaded proposals. 
Such a nightmare as Schedules A and B of the Bill of 
the following March was not dreamt of in the Duke's 
philosophy. The subsequent Tory tradition that Grey 
was ' a traitor to his order ' arose very naturally from 
this complete misconception as to his views. If his 
brother peers had known that even in 1820 he had 
wished to take a hundred seats from the rotten boroughs, 
they would have been less surprised by his * new 
constitution' in 1831. 

Early on Tuesday, November 16, 1830, the Duke 
resigned, and between three and four that afternoon 
the King sent for Lord Grey to come to him at St. James's 
Palace. Grey was already in close consultation with 
his old friends Lord Lansdowne and Lord Holland, the 
two traditional chiefs of the Whig party. He had that 
morning, before receiving the commission to form a 
Government, seen Brougham and offered him the 
Attorney-Generalship, and had met with an angry 
refusal. Grey's action in speaking to Brougham even 
before he had seen the King shows that the Whig 
chiefs understood from the first the importance of 
Brougham's position. If he were allowed, as he wished, 
to remain outside the Government, he would with his 
popularity and eloquence soon destroy it by flank 
attacks. On the other hand, the offer of the Attorney- 

1 Wellington, Despatches, vii. 361, 399. Ellenborough, ii. 435; 
On December 26 the Duke wrote : ' Lord Grey differs with Lord 
Althorp upon Parliamentary Reform,' meaning that Grey was not as 
advanced as Althorp ; this was one of the Duke's great errors. 



MAKING THE CABINET : BROUGHAM 241 

Generalship was far below his claims. But what else 
could they offer him ? He told them that he did not 
wish for office and that he would not leave the Commons, 
but that he would, if desired, accept the Mastership of 
the Rolls, soon falling vacant, a non-ministerial place 
held for life but compatible with a seat in the Lower 
House. This arrangement, from the point of view of 
Government, would be worse than leaving Brougham 
out altogether, as he would still be in the Commons a 
rival to Althorp's leadership, with a place and income 
held at no man's pleasure. Yet it appears that Grey, 
in his first interview with the King on the afternoon of 
November 16, proposed that Brougham should have 
the Rolls ; it was the King who refused, because 
Wellington's parting advice to his master had been the 
warning that the member for Yorkshire as Master of 
the Rolls * would be too powerful for any Government.' 
The Duke had again done Grey an inestimable service.^ 

1 Grey to Holland, dated 'Berkeley Square, Nov. i6, 1830*: 
' I have told Lansdowne everything that passed at my interview 
vt'ith the King, and desired him to communicate it to you. Nothing 
can be more satisfactory than everything the King said. I am to 
see Palmerston at nine, having determined to act as you advise. 
I am to see Richmond at twelve to-morrow ; he seems very cordial. 
I have also written to Anglesey, and am to see him in the morning ; 
what I wish is that he should go to Ireland, and in that I hope 
you will agree with me. But for all these things it is necessary 
that I should have the means of communicating with you, without 
the delay and difficulty of going to Holland House. Pray come, 
if it is not danger to your health ; but that must be the first con- 
sideration.' [Holland was said to be hors de combat from gout 
' eleven months out of twelve.'] 

' Lansdowne will tell you my own feelings about my own place. 
Brougham is the difficulty, and it really is the only one with the King. 
Peace, Reform, and Economy the acknowledged principles of the 
new Government. Carte Blanche as to all offices both in Govern' 
ment and the Household but Brougham. You will have heard his 
speech to-night. / saw him this morning and he positively refused 
the Attorney Generalship. What is to be done with him ? You 
could do more than anybody.' 

This letter, never before priated, confirms the story told by Brougham 
in Memoirs^ iii. 77-8, to the effect that it was the Kmg who refused 



242 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

That evening a memorable scene took place in the 
Commons. After Peel had announced that, as a 
result of the division the night before, the old Ministry 
had resigned, Althorp rose, and turning round to 
Brougham asked him to postpone his Reform Motion, 
which was to have come on that eveniijg. If the new 
Government was to have the least chance of obtaining 
agreement for its own Reform Bill, it was clear that 
Brougham must not raise the question prematurely, 
and so force people in Parliament and in the country to 
commit themselves beforehand for and against parti- 
cular schemes. Brougham, not concealing his excited 
and angry state of mind, very grudgingly consented to 
wait ' till the 25th of this month and no longer. I 
will then,' he said, * at no more distant period, bring 
forward the question of Parliamentary Reform, what- 
ever may be the circumstances, and whosoever may 
be his Majesty's Ministers.' On the next evening 
(November 17) he again made occasion to declare ' I 
have nothing to do with Ministers, except in the respect 
I bear them and except as a member of this House. 
I state this for the information of those who may feel 
any interest in the matter.' It looked as if the new 
Whig Ministry would be * wrecked at the bar.' Mem- 
bers asked each other at Brooks's that night, was this 
really the beginning of a new era, or only of a new 
disappointment, as in 1782, 1806, 18 12 ? 

Nought's constant in the human race, 
Except the Whigs not getting into place. 

Meanwhile Grey was steadily building up the rest of 

him the Rolls, which has been often disbelieved. Croker, ii. 80, also 
tends to confirm Brougham's statement that the outgoing Ministers had 
warned the King against his having the Rolls. This is the more likely, as 
we have evidence in a letter of EUice's to Grey of Oct. 28, 1830, to the 
effect that Brougham had been trying to get the Rolls before the fall of 
the late Ministry, and believed that Lyndhurst had promised it to him, 
though Lyndhurst denied this. The King a few days later did not object 
to Brougham having the Chancellorship, as that was not a life-appointment. 



MAKING THE CABINET : BROUGHAM 243 

his Cabinet — Old Whigs and New Whigs, Canningites 
and unattached lords and gentry of reforming bent. 
The business was going unexpectedly well, without any 
final refusals to join the Government, or any quarrelling 
over places. Althorp indeed had shrunk from accept- 
ing the leadership of the Commons and Chancellorship 
of the Exchequer, till he discovered that unless he 
accepted them Grey would throw up the attempt to 
form a Government at all. With bitter misgivings, he 
yielded to this friendly ultimatum^ but only on condition 
that the Rolls were not given to Brougham, who, if he 
were once irremovably entrenched in that post, would 
make the position of the nominal leader of the House 
impossible. It was therefore useless for Grey to try to 
induce the King to withdraw his veto on Brougham 
having the Rolls, since Althorp's veto was equally 
decisive. Over the rising edifice of Liberal govern- 
ment still hung the shadow of Brougham. 

On Thursday, November 18, Lansdov/ne, after 
being pressed by Grey to accept the Foreign Office, 
refused on the ground that he would prefer to have 
leisure and health to give good counsel in the Cabinet, 
adding * would not Palmerston suit the Foreign Office ? ' 
The post was offered and accepted that day, and so 
began Palmerston's first and best Foreign Ministry.^ 

At four o'clock that afternoon (November 18) 
Grey saw Brougham again, perhaps to implore him 
once more to take the Attorney-Generalship. What 
passed is obscure ; but Brougham seems to have been 
somewhat mollified by Grey's handling, and his passion- 
Ve resentment at some incidents of the last day or 
two was assuaged ; but no arrangement was reached. 
Grey's cryptic account of the interview, in a note to 
Holland that evening, runs thus : ' Brougham has 

^ See letters of November 1 8, in Appendix D, below. These letters 
dispose of Princess Lieven's boast that she prevented Lansdowne having 
the F.C'. (Robinson's Lieven, p. 275). She had in fact absolutely 
no political influence over Grey, sincere as was his friendship for her. 



244 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

just left me couleur de rose. It was my unfortunate 
Note to you, delivered in his presence, that did all the 
mischief.' 

That evening at nine there met in Lansdowne 
House ^ a fairly complete Cabinet, but without a Lord 
Chancellor and without Brougham. It was probably 
at this meeting that the desperate situation was retrieved 
at the eleventh hour by the resolve to offer the Great 
Seal to the member for Yorkshire. Very late that night 
Grey sent off a note to Brougham : * It is necessary 
that I should see you as soon as possible to-morrow, 
that is as soon as possible after I am up, which, worn 
out as I am, cannot I fear be much before ten o'clock.* 
But Brougham had a case in the Lords at ten, so Grey 
had to get up earlier to see him as he passed down 
to Westminster (November 19). Grey asked him to 
become Lord Chancellor. He refused. He was right, 
if he was only thinking of his personal position, for to 
go to the Lords was, as events proved, to uncrown him- 
self as popular leader and to disarm himself of his power 
to threaten and destroy Ministries. He would * drop 
on the Woolsack as on his political deathbed.' But 
all that morning he was besieged by Whigs^ now fairly 
on their knees to him. Finally Althorp, whose moral 
influence extended even over Brougham, told him that 
if he refused office, his act would bring the Tories in 
again, and make Liberal government and legislation 
impossible for another twenty-five years. At that he 
yielded, and there is no reason to think that he did not 
yield mainly on public grounds. 

Perhaps no single appointment ever made so great 
a sensation. 

At Brooks's [notes the aristocratic radical Hobhouse, on 
November 1 9] our friends were handing about a list of the new 

* Grey's London house at this time was in Berkeley Square, only 
a minute's walk therefore from Lord Lansdowne's famous mansion — b. 
convenient proximity for the work of Cabinet-making. 



GREY'S ACHIEVEMENT, NOV. 1830 245 

Administration. Brougham Lord Chancellor ! ! Reform of 
Parliament, Anti-Slavery, Law Reform, Useful Knowledge 
Society, Edinburgh Review, Sublime Society of Beef Stakes, 
hail and farewell ! ! But it is believed, and people seem glad 
to get rid of my learned friend from the House of Commons. 
He came. We set up a shout, and he soon went away. 

The Whig ship was over the bar. Next day 
Campbell writes : 

Such a day at Brooks's ! Who could have foreseen it ? 
This room presents at this moment a new and striking spectacle. 
It is filled with the new Ministers and their adherents, and great 
numbers are sitting round the tables writing lists of the new 
Ministers for their friends in the country.^ 

In four days Grey had accomplished what no other 
man in the country could have done. He had made 
out of scattered and divergent elements a Cabinet, and 
thereby a new Parliamentary party, at once sufficiently 
advanced in opinion to accept a sweeping Reform Bill, 
and yet sufficiently broad-bottomed to muster the votes 
to carry it.^ In that age, with that King, with those 
nobles, a less imposing and aristocratic personality than 
Grey with his * patrician thoroughbred look ' that Byron 
* doted on,' would have failed to create and hold together 
a Government capable, under the existing Constitution, 
of peacefully handing over the power of the aristo- 
cracy to the middle class. People complained then 
and complain still that Grey's Government was very 
aristocratic in its personnel. It certainly was, but it 
passed the Reform Bill ; and the question is whether 
it would have been permitted to do so if it had not been 
so largely made up of aristocrats ; for the measure was, 

^ Campbell's Autobiography. Campbell, on November 17, wrote 
that Brougham had just told him ' the Great Seal is the only thmg he 
could take, and it would then be thought his conduct was sordid.' 

* Out of a Ministry of over forty persons, only one, Charles Wynn, 
resigned on the Bill. This argues great power of selection and knowledge 
of his men on Grey's part. 



246 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

in effect, one by which the aristocracy, under the com- 
bined influence of persuasion, cajolery, and intimidation, 
laid down its monopoly of political power. It is almost 
impossible for people now living to realise the difficulties 
of the task Grey accomplished in 1830-2, the immensity 
of the chasm which he bridged, or his need for stressing 
the conservative elements of his Government in order 
to persuade the King and the aristocracy to surrender 
to the people. That he was at once intensely an aristo- 
crat, yet a more advanced Reformer than Brougham, 
made him the man of the hour, and that hour was big 
with fate. 

Grey's appointments have also been criticised for 
a tendency to nepotism. It was a proverbial fault of 
Whig Governments, alike in the eighteenth and nine- 
teenth centuries. Yet if this list is examined it will be 
seen that the more important posts held by Grey's 
relatives and connections by marriage could not have 
been better filled. Durham and Ellice each played a 
great part of his own in passing the Reform Bill ; while 
Howick and Duncannon, if indeed the latter is to count 
as a connection of Grey's, fully merited their places. 
As to the fitness of George Barrington and George 
Ponsonby for their minor posts, I confess that I am 
uninformed.^ 

^ See Appendix G, below, ' Bear Ellice.' 



THE GREY MINISTRY 



247 



The Grey Ministry in November 1830 was as 
follows. Grey's relations and connections by marriage 
are in italics. 



First Lord of the Treasury . 
Lord Chancellor 

Lord President of the Council 
Privy Seal 
Home Secretary. 

Chancellor of the Exchequer 
and leader of House of 
Commons 

Foreign Secretary 

Colonial Secretary 

First Lord of the Admiralty 

President Board of Control 
(India). 

Postmaster- General 



Chancellor Duchy of Lancaster 
No office .... 



Earl Grey. 

Mr. Brougham, created Lord 

Brougham and Vaux. 
Marquis of Lansdowne. 
Lord Durham. 
Viscount Melbourne (formerly 

Canningite). 



Viscount Althorp. 

Viscount Palmerston (formerly 
Canningite). 

Viscount Goderich (formerly 
Canningite). 

Sir James Graham, Bart, (after- 
wards Peelite-Conservative). 

Charles Grant, formerly Can- 
ningite, Baron Glenelg 1835. 

Duke of Richmond (formerly 
High Tory and later Protec- 
tionist Conservative), 

Lord Holland. 

Earl of Carlisle (formerly a 
Tory, a Whig, and a Can- 
ningite). 



The above formed the Cabinet. 



Secretary at War 



Master of the Mint and Presi- 
dent of Board of Trade . 



Charles Wynn (formerly Gren- 
villite, resigned March 1831 
on account of the Bill, suc- 
ceeded by Sir Henry Parnell, 
who in January 1832 was 
succeeded by Hobhouse). 

Lord Auckland (always a Whig, 
afterwards Governor-General 
of India). 



248 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 



Lord Chamberlain 
Lord Steward 

Master of the Horse . 
Groom of the Stole 
Paymaster of the Forces 

First Commissioner of Land 
Revenue (Woods and For- 
ests) .... 



Treasurer of the Navy 



Attorney-General 
Solicitor-General 
Secretaries of Treasury 
= Government Whips 



Under-Secretary, Colonies 
Treasury Board 



Admiralty Board 



Duke of Devonshire. 

Marquis Wellesley (attached to 

no party : Liberal leanings). 
Earl of Albemarle. 
Marquis of Winchester. 
Lord John Russell (entered 

Cabinet, June 1831). 



Lord Advocate 
Solicitor-General 



Hon. G. Agar Ellis (resigned 
from ill-health, and succeeded 
in Feb. 1831 by Viscount 
Duncannon, John Ponsonby, 
afterwards 4th Earl of Bess- 
borough). 

C. Poulett Thomson (later Ld. 
Sydenham, Gov. Gen. of 
Canada). 

Thomas Denman (knighted). 

W. Home (knighted). 
(Edward Ellice. 

IT. Spring Rice (afterwards 
First Lord Monteagle and 
Chancellor of Exchequer). 

Lord Howick. 

Earl Grey, Viscount Althorp, 

Baron Nugent, Vernon Smithj 

Francis Baring, Hon. George 

Ponsonby (nephew of the other 

George Ponsonby, p. 165, 

above). 

Sir J. Graham, Admiral Sir T. 
Hardy, Admiral Hon. G. 
Dundas, Capt. Sir Samuel 
Pechell, Capt. Hon. George 
Barrington. 

Scotland. 

Francis Jeffrey (of the Edinburgh 

Review, etc.). 
Henry Cockburn (see his Memo- 
rials and Life of yeffrey). 



THE GREY MINISTRY 

Ireland. 



249 



Lord Lieutenant. 
Chief Secretary . 

Lord Chancellor (Ireland) 



Marquis of Anglesey (formerly 
Canningite). Succeeded 1833 
by Wellesley. 

Hon. E. G. Stanley (afterwards 
14th Earl of Derby and Con- 
servative Premier. Entered 
Cabinet, June 1831). 
Lord Plunkett. 



Note. — The Annual Register for 1830 puts Lord Auckland in the 
Cabinet, and this error has been reproduced in other authorities. But 
see Walpole's England, iii. 193, note, ed. 1890 ; his name does not occur 
in the official lists of Cabinet meetings in the Correspondence of 
William IF and Lord Grey. 



2 50 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Grey's Government was first and foremost a coalition 
to carry Reform. As such it proved one of the most 
successful structures in our political history, setting its 
architect high in the rank of British statesmen. The 
whole was soundly planned, and many of Grey's indivi- 
dual appointments, above all the choice of Durham 
and Russell for the Committee to draw up the Bill, 
were happily inspired. But two appointments proved 
unfortunate, that of Stanley to Ireland and that of 
Melbourne to the Home Office. 

It was essential to find a place for Stanley ; ' the 
Rupert of Debate ' proved one of the protagonists 
of Reform as afterwards of Protection, and the 
Derby interest stood for much in that aristocratic 
world which was being asked to make the great 
surrender. But the appointment to the Irish Secre- 
taryship under Lord Anglesey of a young man like 
Stanley, at once so able, so vigorous, and at bottom 
so conservative, prepared the complete failure to 
pacify Ireland which darkened the Whig record in 
the coming era. 

The circumstances of Stanley's re-election on taking 
office marked the little confidence that the people had 
in the Whigs in the winter of 1830, before the intro- 
duction of the Reform Bill changed the scene. Preston, 
though the seat of the Stanley influence, was also, like 
Westminster, one of a few boroughs which enjoyed 
under the old anomalous system a really democratic 
franchise, in striking contrast to the usual * close * 
borough. Orator Hunt's white hat rallied the Radical 
vote and defeated Stanley in Preston, to the huge delight 
of all Lancashire democrats, including the youthful John 
Bright, whose first interest in politics was aroused by 
the local rumours of this contest against privilege. 
Stanley took refuge in the close borough of Windsor, 
where he was returned by the interest of King William, 
who had already, under Grey's assuaging influence, 
quite grown out of his original shyness about his new 



STANLEY AND MELBOURNE 251 

Ministers.^ The Preston election proved to him that 
they had no understanding with the Radicals, who, he 
was convinced, intended to overset the throne. It was 
Grey's business to persuade him that only ' an extensive 
measure of Reform ' could prevent their fell designs. 
The fact that Grey believed it himself made his task the 
easier. The chief importance, perhaps, of public events 
from December to February lay in their effect on the 
mind of the King ; for such was then the custom of 
the Constitution that if William had not been brought 
to agree with the Reform Bill it could not have been 
introduced by his servants into either House of 
Parliament. 

If Stanley was peculiarly unfitted to deal with mani- 
festations of discontent in Ireland, Melbourne was 
equally unfitted to do so in England, though his lethargic 
temper was the very opposite of Stanley's. The fact 
that Melbourne had supported Castlereagh's repressive 
policy in Peterloo days, ought to have prevented Grey 
from appointing him to the Home Office. His adminis- 
tration there marked a retrogression from the Liberal 
policy of his predecessor. Peel had put an end to 
press prosecutions and savage repression, and had 
introduced an efficient civil police, endearingly called 
after his names, whose gradual extension prevented the 
constant and irritating use of the military to preserve 
order. ^ 

Melbourne, the Canningite Tory, had served no ap- 
prenticeship in a party with popular sympathies ; and 

^ When other references are not given, statements in this book about 
the King's relation to Ministers are drawn from that invaluable source 
of information, the Correspondence of King William and Earl Grey 
(Murray, 1867). See belovi^, end of Appendix C, p. 378, for the King's 
attitude w^hen Wellington fell. 

^ During their early and quite unjust unpopularity, in the last days 
of the Wellington Ministry, the new police were less often called 
' Peelers ' and ' Bobbies ' than ' raw lobsters,' ' Blue devils,' or ' Peel's 
bloody gang.' Twenty years later both they and their founder were 
thought of very differently. 



252 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

in spite of his good nature as a ' man about town ' he 
lacked the broader and deeper humaneness of Grey, 
Holland, or Althorp. Unfortunately, they allowed him 
that winter to stain the reputation of the Whig party by 
cruelties which history, now that she knows the facts, 
can pardon as little as Peterloo. 

In November 1 8 30, throughout the southern counties, 
the starving peasants had rioted to obtain half-a-crown 
a day for wages ; the rioters had not killed or seriously 
wounded a single man ; their spirit was humane and 
not unreasonable, differing entirely from that of the 
Bristol rioters in the following autumn. Yet in the 
terrible assize of December three of the rioters were 
judicially murdered ^ — two of these being hanged by 
a refinement of cruelty in the enforced presence of 
a hundred of their weeping comrades — four hundred 
were imprisoned, and, worst of all, 457 men and boys 
were transported as convicts to Australia. In those 
days transportation commonly meant for the poor not 
only horrible physical sufferings but life-long separation 
from parents and friends, wife and child. * The sen- 
tence of final separation on all these families and homes 
was received with a frenzy of consternation and grief. 
" Such a total prostration of the mental faculties by fear," 
wrote the Times correspondent, and " such a terrible 
exhibition of anguish and despair, I never before 
witnessed in a court of justice." ' * The shadow of 
this vengeance,' we are told and can well believe, * still 
darkens the minds of old men and women in the villages 
of Wiltshire, and eighty years have been too short a 
time to blot out its train of desolating memories.* ^ 

If the pen of the already famous Edinburgh Reviewer, 

* This is not counting the six men and boys more justifiably hanged 
for arson. 

* Hammond, Tke Village Labourer (Longmans, 191 1), chaps, 
xi., xii. The story both of the riots and the assize is there to be read, 
for the first time, in full detail. The remarks on Grey on pp. 312—14 
are very just. 



THE LAST PEASANTS' REVOLT 253 

now Reform member for Calne, had been employed in 
contrasting the provocation given by these starving 
peasants to the punishment they received, the Winchester 
Assize of 1830 would stand in the national memory 
to-day by the side of Judge Jeffreys' Western Circuit. 
But the lives and sufferings of the agricultural labourer 
were a thing outside party tradition, hidden deeply from 
the knowledge of Tory and of Whig. In November 
all the propertied classes had been in panic ; in December 
they were calling for the punishment of those who had 
scared them. If Grey had shown in this matter the 
real statesmanship which our age would approve, he 
would have lost the confidence not only of the King and 
of all the aristocracy, but of the greater part of middle- 
class opinion to whom he was about to make his great 
appeal. If the Whigs had seemed to palter with 
* anarchy ' and * Jacobinism,' the ship of Reform could 
never have been launched. * In the corrupted currents 
of the world ' it was as well for the cause of constitutional 
progress that in this matter Grey was blind to that which 
his generation could not see. Nevertheless it will always 
be a stain on a singularly pure reputation that he did not 
insist on a sweeping reduction of the sentences, which 
might have been effected without showing any dangerous 
belief in the cause of the labourers, or in the economic 
possibility of a living wage.^ 

Not content with the terrible Assize, Ministers pro- 
ceeded to turn the law officers of the Crown on to 

^ On November 24, 1830, in the first days of office, while the riots 
were still going on. Grey wrote to Holland : ' Raising wages would no 
doubt have a good effect. But any resolution of this sort published 
by the Magistrates would evidently appear to be dictated by fear and 
would operate as a premium to violence, in quarters which this spirit 
has not yet reached. Besides, what authority have the Magistrates or 
can they have to direct any measures for that purpose ? They cannot 
prescribe to me what wages I am to pay my labourers, or what rents 
I am to receive from my tenants.' Then follows the individualist argu- 
ment against fixing wages or rents, which at that time completely held 
the economic field. 



254 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

prosecuting Carlile and Cobbett, the two leading 
journalists who had taken up the cause of the starving 
labourers, and had shown that the riots, which they 
deprecated, were provoked by a series of intolerable 
wrongs, for which there was no legal or peaceable 
redress. In January 1831 Carlile was condemned 
to two years' imprisonment. The renewal of press 
prosecution enraged the Radicals all over the country. 
Place saw, with more indignation than surprise, that 
Peel's generous policy had been reversed by the Whigs. 
He wrote to Joseph Hume about Carlile's case : 

Look at the words prosecuted, look at the barbarous sentence, 
and find, if you can, since the time when Castlereagh put an end 
to his own existence, any one who has been prosecuted and sen- 
tenced for such words ; scarcely, indeed, during his malignant 
sway were such words prosecuted.^ 

The prosecutions of Carlile and Cobbett weakened 
the Government in the country more than the sentences 
on the rioters, though both did them good with the King. 
In the northern industrial towns the working men were 
beginning to regard the new Government as no improve- 
ment on the old, and were abandoning all hope of an 
efficient Reform Bill. In January the population of 
Sheffield had a plan for disarming the soldiers if they 
entered the town, but they were wisely sent else- 
where.2 

Cobbett was a harder nut to crack than poor Carlile. 
His trial at the Guildhall did not take place till July 
1 83 1. Denman, in prosecuting, had to speak of him 
with cautious respect as * one of the greatest masters 
of the English language.' That mastery was very 
fully exercised in Court at the expense of the Whig 
Ministers, over whom Cobbett insulted and triumphed, 
like Home Tooke and Hone over the Tories of old. 
But as the Reform Bill had then been introduced, the 

1 Add. MSS., B.M., 35,149, f. 24. 

2 Ibid. f. 243. 



RETRENCHMENT A FIASCO isS 

Government was able to stand the shock of his acquittal, 
as the nation had something else to think about, and 
Grey was by then more popular than Cobbett 
himself. 

There were indeed limits to Melbourne's mis- 
management of the Home Office. In spite of the 
frequent strikes and the disturbed and dangerous 
atmosphere of the years 1 830-1 832, he and Grey from 
the first resisted strong pressure to revive Castlereagh's 
coercion bills and espionage against the Trade Unions,^ 
and a common interest in the fortunes of the Reform Bill 
soon induced Melbourne to consult the views of such 
a sound adviser as Francis Place on the best means of 
preserving order among the working classes. 

Grey had come in on the threefold programme of 
Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform. Peace and Reform 
were to prove great realities, but Retrenchment was a 
fiasco. Although ' cheap government ' was the only 
economic panacea on which Reformers of all shades 
were agreed, they were all deceived in supposing that 
the services of a growing community in the nineteenth 
century could be cut down, or even prevented from 
increasing. National salvation did not lie along that 
path of mere negation. Only one branch of the tree 
of national expenditure was rotten wood with no sap 
in it — the scandalous pensions on which the political 
system of Pitt and his successors had largely rested. 
But King William and Grey were agreed that although 
they would prevent the repetition of such scandals, 
they could not in honour or justice withdraw grants 
for life that had been made, however wrongly, on the 
national faith. This decision caused acute disappoint- 
ment to the country, fed for twenty years past on a 
literature of denunciation and exposure of the pension- 
holders. * These damned pension lists,* wrote Creevey, 

1 Melbourne Papers, 122, 127-8, Howick Papers, MS. 



256 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

'are a cursed millstone about the neck of the 
Government.' 

For the rest, no large field of retrenchment could 
be found. The Tory country gentlemen had never 
been militarists, and their favourite ministers had wisely 
declined to keep up big armaments after Waterloo. The 
incoming Whig Government scraped and pared where 
they could ; and the King, whom they dared not 
seriously offend till their Reform Bill was launched, 
was not unreasonable over ' Household ' reductions. 
But the net outcome of Retrenchment proved very 
small, and the anger of the nation was proportionately 
great. The Whigs, who had headed the cry down this 
blind alley, and had turned out the Wellington Ministry 
on a Civil List vote, were denounced as deceivers and 
hypocrites. 

In February 1831, Althorp's budget was a failure ; 
its chief proposals were rejected by opinion in the City 
and had to be withdrawn. The Cabinet discussed its 
own resignation, but Althorp, who was undoubtedly 
the most anxious of all its members to get back to 
private life, knew that they were bound in honour to 
remain till they had kept their word with the nation on 
Reform. This was also the fixed idea of Grey. 

In February the Reform Bill was already drawn up 
and secretly agreed upon by King and Cabinet, but until 
it could be introduced there were bad times to weather 
through, testing the loyalty and temper of individual 
Ministers. Brougham, so at least his colleagues believed, 
dived into the underground regions of the Press, that 
* fourth estate ' so mysterious to aristocratic statesmen, 
and set the Times attacking Grey and lauding the Chan- 
cellor to the skies. (February 1831.) Durham, whose 
fiery temper was seldom under good control, accused 
Brougham to his face in a violent scene, and the unap- 
peasable feud between the two men began. But Grey, 
fundamentally loyal and generous, declared, contrary 
to the opinion of everyone else and perhaps contrary 



GREY'S NERVE AND GOOD TEMPER 257 

to his own, that he believed Brougham's assertions of 
innocence in the matter of the Times articles.^ From 
the moment Brougham had taken office under him, 
he had resumed his former friendly relations, and 
doubtless understood that he must put up with a good 
deal of intrigue if he would live at peace with * old 
wickedshifts,' as friend Creevey still called Baron 
Brougham and Vaux. The society in which these great 
men lived together while in office was neither formal 
nor dull. At a small dinner-party at Lord Sefton's, 
where Grey was present, the host marched out from 
the dining-room in mock procession before the new Lord 
Chancellor, carrying ' the fire shovel for a mace.' 

Through the vexations and disgraces of these early 
months, as through the storms and dangers of the Reform 
struggle that followed. Grey was absolutely serene. 
Those who met him in private, again and again in their 
letters and diaries made note of his cheerful enjoyment 
of life. The ' peevish and wayward ' invalid of the 
long years of opposition had disappeared. Was it that 
a physical change in his health happened to coincide 
with his assumption of the Premiership } Or had his 
famous ' low spirits ' in the past been all along moral 
and political, a kind of State valetudinarianism, curable 
only by office and responsibility for great public interests } 
Certain it is, that from the moment of coming into power 
until the Reform Bill was on the Statute Book, he showed 
more * nerve ' than any of his colleagues, and a sweeter 
temper than any except Althorp, From pessimist he 
had turned optimist. In the worst moments of February 
1 831 he was 'very cheerful,' relying on the coming 
Bill to burst like the sun through the clouds of present 
discontents. 2 

1 Butler, 193—4; Creevey, ii. 219-20, Feb. 27, 183 1, 

2 My authorities for this paragraph are too numerous for citation ; 
but here are three amusing pictures in the Creevey Papers of Grey during 
the Reform Bill time : 

March 14, 183 1. At Lord Grey's. ' Grey was all alive O ! quite 



2^8 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

The one activity of Government, besides the Reform 
Bill, for the details of which Grey made himself personally 
responsible was foreign affairs. Ever since he had 
been Foreign Secretary in 1806 the affairs of Europe 
had a special attraction for him, and to maintain peace 
with the new Liberal France was one of the dearest 
objects of his life. He would have wished to take the 
Foreign Office himself, but since the duties of the 
Premiership prevented that, he became Palmerston's 
friend and tutor. There may be exaggerations in 
Creevey's statement that ' Palmerston never signed a 
dispatch that had not been seen and altered by Lord 
Grey,' but there is ample evidence that Grey took a 
leading part from 1830 to 1833 in every step of the 
perilous negotiations by which war was averted and 
Belgium settled. Under Grey's tutoring, Palmerston 
was more truly successful in his first period at the Foreign 
Office than in his more boisterous dealing with foreign 
countries in later years. Grey would have allowed none 
of those lectures to benighted foreigners from the island 
pulpit, those blustering irruptions and rapid retreats, 
those too frequent espousals of the wrong side in a 
foreign quarrel, which in later years made ' Palmer- 
stonianism ' so dear to the British Philistine and so con- 
temptible to wise observers. At once firm and pacific, 

overflowing, never ceasing in his little civilities to myself, wanting me 
to eat this or drink that : — " Do, Creevey ; I assure you it's damned 
good ; I know you'll like it." Can't you see him ? It was not amiss 
for a Prime Minister to c;ill out at dinner : " Do you think, Creevey, 
we shall carry our Reform Bill in the Lords ? " ' 

March 26. * I wish you could have been with me when I entered 
the Premier's drawing-room last night. I was rather early, and he was 
standing alone with his back to a fire — the best dressed, the handsomest, 
and apparently the happiest man in all his royal master's domains.' 

May 27. ' While I was riding in the Park yesterday J received rather 
a smartish pat on my shoulder from an unseen stick. When I turned 
round and saw my assailant in quite an ultra fit of laughing, who do 
you suppose it could be } No other than our Prime Minister. When 
I praised his royal master [who had just given Grey the garter], he said : 
" He is a prime fellow, is he not } " ' 



.^-=«e^ 



<^1^ 



S- 




^'^M'^i- 



GREY, PALMERSTON, TALLEYRAND 259 

the foreign policy of Grey and Palmerston wrought 
with quiet dignity and won the confidence of all. 

The Government of Louis Philippe, anxious to 
preserve peace with England, had sent over as its 
ambassador the doyen of the diplomatic world, the almost 
legendary Prince Talleyrand. Macaulay was not ex- 
aggerating when he pictured to his sisters the appear- 
ance in London drawing-rooms of this extraordinary 
patriarch : 

His face is as pale as that of a corpse, and wrinkled to a 
frightful degree. His eyes have an odd glassy stare quite peculiar 
to them. His hair, thickly powdered and pomatumed, hangs 
down his shoulders on each side as straight as a pound of tallow 
candles. 

Creevey adds that at table he used to make * the cursedest 
nasty noises in his throat ' and was detested by Grey's 
ladies. But Grey's own dealings with Talleyrand were 
intimate and friendly, and greatly contributed to the 
peace of Europe. 

On December 21, 1830, Grey was able to write to 
Lord Holland : 

We go on admirably with foreign affairs. Yesterday a 
Protocol was signed by the five Powers, which amounts to a 
recognition of the independence of Belgium. ^ It is a great 
thing to have brought Austria and Russia to concur in such a 
measure. 

The initial step thus taken, it remained to get the 
Belgians to select for themselves a monarch whom all 
the Powers of Europe could accept. The first serious 
crisis occurred in January-February 1831, when the 
majority of the Belgian Congress chose the Due de 
Nemours, son of the King of the French. This England 
could only regard as ' union with France and nothing 
else.' Our business was to persuade the French Govern- 
ment to refuse the tempting offer ; the danger lay in 

^ See p. 225 above and p. 352 below. 



26o LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

the French Chauvinist party, more anxious for national 
self-assertion than for peace. In January 1831 Grey 
wrote to Lord Holland : 

There seems to be no hope but holding a strong language 
to France, whose Government, I think, would not like to run 
the risk of seeing her whole commerce swept from the sea. I 
wished and hoped better things, but whether from insincerity 
or weakness, things are taking a course in which we cannot 
acquiesce. 

And again: 

I have had a very long interview with Talleyrand to-day. Both 
he and his Government profess fairly : and I am ready to give 
them credit for sincerity. But still things are taking a course 
which will lead too probably to war, and I am not quite satisfied 
with the measures they are taking to prevent it. 

When once the French Government understood that the 
new regime in England was sincerely the friend of France, 
but that there were lengths of concession to which not 
even a Whig Government would go, they gave in and 
refused the crown for Nemours. So matters stood at 
the end of February 1831. A landing stage had been 
safely reached, but several more Belgian crises of an 
equally serious nature still lay ahead, which Grey and 
Palmerston staved off ; again and again saving Europe 
with noiseless and unobtrusive patience, and so keeping 
the ring clear at home for the more resonant battle of 
Reform. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PREPARATION OF THE BILL NOVEMBER I83O 

TO FEBRUARY I 83 1 

* I was deeply impressed with the conviction of Lord Grey that 
none but a large measure would be a safe measure.' — Lord John 
Russell, English Constitution, p. xxxvi. 

To the men on whom fell the task of enfranchising the 
working class in the following generation, to the Chartists 
and to John Bright after them, tne most important aspect 
of the First Reform Bill was its limitations. But in the 
days of their fathers, to Radical and Tory alike, the 
miracle to be explained was why it went so far. And 
that is the question that presents itself to History. 
The answer is given by Mr, Butler, whose researches 
have provided for the first time a reliable and compre- 
hensive history of the Bill and its passage : 

Lord Grey's statesmanlike conviction of the need and advan- 
tage of an extensive measure was the prime source of the Bill ; the 
wisdom of Russell and the will of Durham embodied this convic- 
tion in a bold and simple form ; and as regards the moderates 
in the Cabinet and the party generally, it was proved once again 
that a keen and determined minority will by their very momentum 
overbear a comparatively indifferent and undecided majority.^ 

It only needs to be added to this, that the conversion of 
the ' moderates in the party ' outside the Cabinet was 
effected by the persuasive and terrifying expression of 
the national will after the Bill had appeared in public. 

1 The Passing of the Great Reform Bin, ].'K.M.'&\xt\er, I9i4,p.i83. 

261 



262 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

But until the measure had been drawn up in secret, 
and accepted by a conservative King and a mixed 
Cabinet, its makers had to work in the dark, uncheered 
by the popular approval, and guided solely by their own 
foresight of what the reception of particular proposals 
was likely to be. It was during these months of gestation 
before the Bill saw light, from the end of November 1830 
to the end of February 1831, that Grey's tact and state- 
craft were put to their severest test, and won a triumph so 
smooth and perfect that the pitfalls and dangers he avoided 
with such skill have scarcely been noticed by posterity. 

When, about a week after the completion of his 
Ministry, Grey asked Durham, as they came down the 
steps of the House of Lords, to * assist him in drawing 
up a Reform Bill ' and to take Lord John Russell into 
partnership in the enterprise, he deliberately gave the 
key of the position to the advanced section of Reformers 
in his Cabinet. When, a few days later, he consented 
to the proposal of Durham and Russell that the ' Com- 
mittee of Four ' to draw up the Bill should include 
besides themselves Sir James Graham and Lord Dun- 
cannon, the former closely confederate with Althorp, and 
the latter versed in the lore of Irish boroughs, deliberate 
exclusion had been made of all * moderates ' and adherents 
of ' bit by bit Reform.' ^ 

^ Three roads, of three different dates, qualities, and gradients, still 
lead from the west end of Rydal Water to Wordsworth's cottage at 
Grasmere. That sound supporter of the Bill, Dr. Arnold of Fox How 
and Rugby, used to call these roads respectively, ' Old Corruption,' 
* Bit by Bit Reform,' and ' Radical Reform,' after the three rival 
policies of which every one was in those days talking. But the actual 
Reform Bill, according to its authors, was no one of the three, but came 
half way between ' Radical ' and ' Bit by Bit.' Grey energetically 
repudiated both ' Radical Reform,' which he defined as Universal Suf- 
frage, and ' Bit by Bit Reform,' which, he told the Lords, would have 
' left the question in as unsettled a condition as before.' See his speech 
on the Bill, October 3, 1831, Hansard, pp. 934, 935. Also Parker's 
Graham, i. 121, where Graham writes : ' The plan was in unison with 
the instructions of Lord Grey ; it was no bit by bit Reform.' 



THE COMMITTEE OF FOUR 263 

No less marked was the exclusion of Brougham 
from these inner counsels. The Chancellor would have 
ruined all, for, while still regarded as the popular 
champion of Reform, he was wedded to the retention 
of half the rotten borough representation. And he 
would certainly have quarrelled on the Committee with 
Durham and Russell in particular, and in general with 
any colleague who tried to do business with him on 
equal terms. In the rivalry between Brougham and 
Russell for the leading place among Reformers, Grey 
had wisely sided with Russell. On October 8, a month 
before the Duke fell, Grey had written to Holland, re- 
ferring to Brougham's coming motion in the Commons: 
* He has taken the question of Reform into his own hands, 
which I do not think was quite handsome to John Russell.' 
In the Cabinet discussions of January 1831 Brougham 
tried in vain to have the introduction of the Bill in the 
Commons taken from Russell and assigned to Althorp.^ 

During December and January 1 830-1, while the 
Bill was in the making, there was no shadow of ill-feeling 
between the men who were making it. The Committee 
of Four consulted deeply with Grey and Althorp.^ ' My 
whole morning has been occupied with a long discussion 
on the plan of Reform with Lambton (Durham) and 
Lord John Russell,' writes Grey to his wife, on January 2, 
twelve days before the Committee sent in its report to 
the Cabinet. 

Durham had not as yet conceived any grievance against 
his father-in-law's treatment of his claims, such as took 
possession of him in the ensuing summer.^ His personal 

1 Appendix E, p. 381, below. 

* For Althorp's scheme, very like Russell's, but not quite so sweep- 
ing, see his letter to Russell in December, Butler, 179. Graham's conduct 
in the Committee is said by Le Marchant to have been guided by Althorp. 

* On November 2, 1830, immediately after his admission to the 
Cabinet as Privy Seal, he wrote to Lord Grey, ' I feel quite unable to 
put down on the paper the impression of those feelings which I entertain 
for all your kindness to me.' In the following August he had quite 
forgotten that he ever felt or wrote thus. 



264 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

conduct as Chairman of the Committee in December 
and January seems to have been perfect. Since Russell 
was destined to introduce the Bill to the public in the 
House of Commons, Durham generously asked him to 
draw up the first ' plan.' Lord John's plan became the 
basis of the Committee's work, and remains the outline, 
with very little alteration in principle, of the Bill that 
passed into law. Lord John wrote that when he was 
drafting his plan, two considerations decided him in 
favour of a sweeping measure, ' the authority of Lord 
Grey,' and * the dangerous excitement consequent on 
the Duke of Wellington's denial of all Reform.' ^ The 
most important principles of the Bill — destruction of the 
rotten boroughs en masse without money compensation, 
and an uniform middle-class franchise for all boroughs 
old and new — though they were first set down on paper 
in the solitude of Lord John's study, were the result of 
informal conversations, extending over a period of many 
months,^ held between the Whig chiefs, especially 
Grey, Durham, Althorp, Ellice, and Lord John him- 
self, the group whence emanated the Reform Bill. 
The time has now come to review the principles 
of the * new constitution ' which they gave to their 
country. 

Anyone familiar with the political history of England 
from the Restoration of Charles II to the death of 
Queen Anne must be struck by the regular way in 
which successive general elections then gave effect to 
the variations of political opinion in the community. 
The alternation of Whig and Tory Parliaments in the 
reigns of the last Stuarts answered so happily and so 
accurately to the changing feelings of the public, that 
England was able to enforce her will in every big 

* Russell, Early Correspondence, ii. 53. For the text of ' the plan ' 
see his English Constitution, pp. zxxvi-xxxviii. See Appendix E, below, 
' The Framing of the Reform Bill.' 

* See p. 223, above. 



THE DECLINE OF POPULAR RIGHTS 265 

question as it came up — in Marlborough's time, for 
instance, the country was able to use the Whigs to 
win the war, the Tories to make the peace, and 
afterwards the Whigs again to secure the Hanoverian 
succession. 

But during the seventy years before the Reform 
Bill things were very different. Throughout that 
period, increasingly as time went on, the country 
failed to make its wishes felt, whenever they conflicted 
with those of the King and of the borough-owners. 
Public opinion had not the means to continue Chatham 
in power ; to stop the quarrel with America ; to punish 
the Peterloo Ministry for passing the Six Acts and for 
prosecuting Queen Caroline. The Tories, however 
unpopular they might be, had no longer anything to 
fear, nor the Whigs anything to hope, from a general 
election. Only when at last a King not unfavourable 
to the Whigs chanced to ascend the throne, at a moment 
when the Tories were split up into three mutually 
hostile factions, could Grey and his friends obtain a 
precarious hold on power, conceded to them with 
almost contemptuous indifference, as to caretakers 
who must soon hand back the government of 
England to the men who owned it as their private 
property. 

The Constitution then had changed in a non-popular 
direction. The Whigs were right in their historical 
argument that the * old constitution ' which the Tories 
identified with the rotten boroughs was only about a 
century old in its methods and spirit, however mediaeval 
it might be in its form. It was the same, yet not the 
same. The reasons were clear. The population had 
gradually shifted from the old boroughs to new centres, 
and during the last forty years it had shifted with the 
increasing speed of great economic change. North 
England was insufficiently represented, and the new 
' industrial North ' was hardly represented at all. That 
Old Sarum had two votes and Manchester none was 



266 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

important, not as a singularity, but as a symbol of the 
general state of the representation. 

Indeed, although the names of the boroughs had 
been preserved without alteration since Stuart times, 
the position and character of the electorate had in many 
cases been changed, and changed for the worse. The 
process of bringing the borough elections under the 
control of small oligarchies in the borough, or of aris- 
tocratic influences outside, had been going on through- 
out the Tudor and Stuart periods ; but it was only in 
the eighteenth century that the process had been com- 
pleted, and that the position of a single borough * patron ' 
had been publicly recognised in the majority of cases.^ 

The variety of the franchise in the close boroughs 
was very great, but in effect each close borough belonged 
to one individual borough-owner, who was in a position 
to dictate or purchase the votes of the nominal electors. 
The borough-owner in his turn extracted from the 
Government of the day office, pensions, peerages, sine- 
cures, and every form of advancement at the public 
expense for himself, his clients, and his relations. 
That is why the system was known as ' Old Corruption,* 
and why Pitt — as his good angel, Wilberforce, lamented 
— when once he had abandoned the idea of reforming 
Parliament, had to govern the country, not by * prin- 
ciple ' but by ' influence.' ^ 

The Friends of the People had drawn out a table 
in 1793, showing that over 300 out of 513 representa- 
tives of England and Wales owed their return to 
individual proprietors, 71 of whom were lords and 91 
commoners.^ The evils of the system were tempered, 
but not relieved by the fact that a few large boroughs 

^ Porritt, Unreformed House of Commons. 

2 Private Papers of Wilberforce (Unwin, 1897), pp. 72-4, a very 
remarkable passage that ought to be carefully studied. Wilberforce 
gave a moderate support to the Reform Bill of 1831 on these moral 
grounds {idem, p. 266). 

3 Pp. 73-4, above. 



'OLD CORRUPTION' TO GO 267 

like Westminster and Preston had an almost man- 
hood suffrage. But what were they among so 
many ? 

The men who drew up the Reform Bill determined 
to sweep away at one stroke all the * nomination 
boroughs ' — that is, to substitute the principle of elec- 
tion by the people for that of nomination by a borough- 
owner in a good many more than 200 seats. This 
revolution was to be achieved by two distinct processes — 
first, by disfranchising all boroughs where the popula- 
tion was below a certain number, so taking away some 
1 60 seats that could be used to enfranchise new boroughs 
and to add to the insufficient county representation ; ^ 
and secondly, by * opening ' to all ;^io householders 
the franchise of those * close boroughs ' whose 
population justified their retaining one or more 
members. 2 

The Reform Bill, in the eyes of the sufferers, was first 
and foremost a confiscation of private property and of 
corporate and customary rights, as extensive as that 
which accompanied the destruction of the mediseval 
Church by the Tudors, and of the Monarchy by the 
victorious Roundheads. And this wholesale destruc- 
tion of the property and influence of individuals was 
to be effected without compensation, though com- 
pensation had been part of the Reform schemes of 
Wyvill and Pitt half a century before, and of Russell 
himself in 1823. But in 1831 the country, already 
furious against the Whigs for their failure to retrench 
and for their refusal to abolish the life-pensions granted 
by the Tories,^ would have lost all patience if asked to 

^ ' Schedule A ' of the Bill was the list of boroughs that lost both 
their members ; ' Schedule B,' those that lost one member out of two. 

2 E.g. Lord Lansdowne's Calne, or Great Marlow. The latter had 
been bought by a Welsh attorney, Williams, who, having speculated in 
coal-mines, invested the proceeds in buying the two Marlow seats ; he 
paid the voters ;^I5 a-piece at election time (Gunning's Cambridge, 
i. 103). 3 See pp. 255-6, above. 



268 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

buy out the * borough-mongers,' the name by which 
the unfortunate borough-owners were execrated that 
year by nine Englishmen out of ten.^ 

It was this clean sweep of the * borough-mongers ' 
that gave the Bill the popularity which floated it over 
all rocks and shallows on its headlong course. Even 
Brougham, who had wanted half-measures, confessed as 
much after the event. In short the decision to destroy 
all the rotten boroughs was one of the most prudent acts 
of daring in history, and it is good to think that the motive 
was moral as well as political. Althorp told his colleagues 
that, after only a few weeks in office, his experience of 
the corrupt pressure of the borough-owners on the 
Government was such that he would no longer tolerate 
any vestige of a system which left seats in the Commons 
in the hands of individuals — no, not even to give ' able 
young lawyers ' and budding Burkes, Cannings, and 
Macaulays a better chance of being put early and easily 
into the House by their patrons, nor even to find new 
Ministers a sure place of refuge on taking office under 
the Crown. 

Although the total abolition of nomination boroughs 
was at once the most popular and the most fiercely con- 
tested part of the Bill, it is the part that has been least 

^ Four days after the Bill was brought in, Creevey (ii. 221) writes : 
' To think of dear Ald(e)borough and Orford, both belonging to 
Lord Hertford, and purchased at a great price, being clearly bowled 
out, without a word of with your leave or by your leave. Aye, and 
such proprietors are treated as criminals by the whole country for 
making any fight on their behalf. To be sure, the poor devils who 
cling to the wreck will have mobbing enough out of doors before the 
business is over.' Lord Hertford, formerly the notorious Yarmouth, 
alias Lord Monmouth, alias Lord Steyne (see p. i 53, above), had written 
at the time of the Duke's fall : ' They tell me Lord Grey is to resume 
the command of the Reformers. So probably some of the uninhabited 
Burgage boroughs will be bought up as in Ireland [viz., in 1800], either 
by public money or by the populous tovms themselves to whom the 
elections will be transferred. I do not think Attwood and his Unionists 
will do anything beyond talking' (Add. MSS., B.M., 30,112). 
Imagine then this man's feelings when he heard of Schedule A ! 



THE TEN-POUND HOUSEHOLDER 269 

questioned in the retrospect. The choice of the uniform 
;^io household franchise for all boroughs is open to more 
dispute ; yet I believe that the more closely the actual 
conditions of that day are studied, the harder it becomes 
to name any alternative which would not have led to 
disaster. 

First, it is suggested that the working class should 
have been enfranchised by an uniform household suffrage. 
The answer to this is that such a Bill would never have 
passed, and indeed owing to William IV's insurmountable 
objection to Radical Reform could never even have been 
introduced. The King, the two Houses of Parliament,^ 
and the middle classes would have been united against 
it. Right or wrong, it was then as unattainable as 
O'Connell's Repeal of the Union. 

Secondly, it has been argued by more conservative 
temperaments like Peel, Disraeli, and Bagehot that there 
ought to have been no uniform suffrage at all, but a 
variety of different franchises. It was plausibly and 
honestly argued by Peel in 1831 that it was a grave 
evil to abolish the working-class electorate in Preston 
and Westminster in favour of the ;/^io householder ; 
that the new franchise should have been made to vary 
from place to place, democratic here, middle-class there, 
aristocratic or ' borough-mongering ' elsewhere. This 
doctrine still finds advocates. England, it is argued, 
should have been represented by her different classes, 
instead of being swamped first by a middle class, and 
thirty-five years later by a lower class electorate. If, 
it is argued, the working men had not felt themselves 
excluded from the new constitution in 1832 by an uniform 
middle-class franchise, they would never have been able in 
1867 to obtain an uniform franchise for their own benefit.^ 

Now it is perfectly true that the uniform middle- 

1 The same House of Commons that passed the Reform Bill by 367 
votes to 231 rejected Hunt's motion to enfranchise all householders 
paying rates and taxes by 123 votes to one vote. 

2 Bagehot, Biographical Studies, Lord Althorp, pp. 309-11, ed. 1889, 



270 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

class franchise in 1832 led to the uniform household 
franchise in 1867. But democrats think that the uniform 
household franchise of 1867 was a good thing. Intelli- 
gent Radical leaders like Place, and the working-class 
electorate of Westminster whose sons were to have no 
votes under the First Reform Bill, welcomed the uniform 
middle-class franchise partly because they foresaw that 
it must lead in the end to an uniform working-class fran- 
chise.^ These Radicals preached, not in vain, that it 
was the best tactics for the working class to get the Bill 
as it stood passed at once into law. 

But even those who think that the uniform franchises 
of 1832, 1867, 1884, and 1917 have been a series of 
misfortunes, or at least of chances of perfection let slip 
owing to the original error of 1831, must answer the 
question which Grey and the Committee of Four had 
to ask themselves — how can the establishment of ' fancy ' 
and * variety ' franchises be defended in the House and 
in the country ? How, the Whig statesmen may well 
have thought, can we confiscate vast masses of property 
purchased or inherited, and then turn round and create 
at our own whim and fancy new private privileges, 
picking here and choosing there which rotten boroughs 
are to survive, which towns shall have household suffrage, 
which shall have a ^Tio, a ;{2o or an educational fran- 
chise ? Unless we have one rule to apply to all cases, 
the charge of * cooking ' in the Whig interest will be 
unanswerable. Our Bill will be hooted down if we pro- 
pose to make a great revolution on any save an uniform 
basis. And Grey, whose object was to 'put the ques- 
tion at rest,' may well have thought that, even if it were 
possible to pass so arbitrary and whimsical a measure, 

^ Existing life-interests of voters were preserved under the Bill. 
' Burdett and I thought our Westminster friends would oppose the 
;^io qualification clause; but we were wrong, for we found all our 
supporters delighted with the Bill' {Hobhouse, iv. 88). Some of the 
most rotten boroughs had nominally a democratic franchise, as Gatton, 
where ' the right is popular, but there is nobody to exercise it.' 



DECISION OF THE CABINET 271 

the question would be raised again in a year by every 
town that envied the franchise of its neighbour. 

Granted, then, that it was necessary to fix an uniform 
franchise for all the boroughs, what was the standard 
to be ? The first decision of the Committee of Four was 
that which was finally adopted, in favour of householders 
rated at ;^io. But on second thoughts, at Durham's 
suggestion and against Russell's wish, they inserted the 
Radical panacea of election by ballot, and as a make- 
weight altered the more popular ;^io franchise to the 
more exclusive £20, Durham, who was closely in touch 
with outside opinion, believed that the ballot was so 
generally demanded by Reformers, that it must be 
included at any price to ensure Radical support for the 
Bill. But the price he proposed was too high ; the 
;{|2o householders would have formed an oligarchy 
scarcely requiring the protection of the ballot. How- 
ever, when the Committee's draft bill went up to the 
Cabinet in the middle of January, it contained the ballot 
and the £20 franchise. Grey and most of the Cabinet 
objected to the ballot, which was at once struck out. 
And after a month's uncertainty the more popular ;^io 
franchise was restored. Russell, who was to introduce 
the Bill, produced at the last moment fresh calculations 
showing that the £20 franchise would yield a much 
more restricted electorate than the Cabinet ever intended 
to create ; it would make so many new ' rotten boroughs.' 
Durham, Althorp, and Brougham were also strong 
advocates of the broader franchise, which was re-adopted 
just in time. Ten pounds and no ballot was after all 
the best policy, for the King declared that he would 
never have agreed to the ballot, .and the people would 
never have been content with the twenty pounds.^ 

1 Appendix E, below. Durham and Brougham would both have 
liked household suffrage, but knew it to be impossible {Brougham, iii, 
92, 523). Durham to Grey (MS.), October ii, 1831, 'In my 
own opinion all householders ought to vote, whether paying ^^lo or 
10 shillings.' 



272 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Even the ;{|io franchise was none too generous ; 
it did not include the whole middle class. In the 
interest of democratic unity and progress this was, 
perhaps, a blessing in disguise, for if all the shopkeepers 
and clerks in the country had been given votes in 1832, 
it would have been impossible for Bright and Gladstone 
in days to come to get them to unite with the working 
class in support of household suffrage. It was as well, 
therefore, that the bourgeoisie, when they got over their 
first delirious delight, found that they still had grievances 
under the Bill. Only half of them had votes ; and the 
redistribution of seats, enormous as it had been, was 
yet far from being complete, or just to the middle class. 
Though * nomination ' boroughs were all gone, there 
were many small, corrupt boroughs left over which the 
neighbouring gentry could exert great influence. The 
old borough-mongering oligarchy disappeared in 1832, 
but the landed gentry as a whole were the governing 
class until 1846, and even after the repeal of the Corn 
Laws they had immense power until the Reform 
Act of 1867, John Bright, in agitating for household 
suffrage in the 'sixties, thus summed up the electoral 
position : 

The working men are almost universally excluded, roughly 
and insolently, from political power ; and the middle class, whilst 
they have the semblance of it, are defrauded of the reality.^ 

Bright used always to say of the First Reform Bill : 
* It was not a good Bill, but it was a great Bill when it 
passed.' It was a great Bill because it passed — and 
by passing put an end to Burke's doctrine that the 
British constitution could not be altered with the chang- 
ing years. A more perfect Bill, such as the experience 
of our later age could, doubtless, dictate, would have 
failed to pass in 1832, and its rejection would sooner 
or later have been followed by a civil war. 

1 Trevelyan's Bright, 365. 



SCOTLAND 273 

Such was the general character of the * new constitu- 
tion,' drawn up in three separate but similar Bills for 
England, Scotland, and Ireland. 

Duncannon, who was a Ponsonby and a friend of 
Dan O'Connell, advised about the details for Ireland ; 
the Reform Bills pleased O'Connell when they appeared, 
and in spite of the Whig Government in Ireland having 
begun a prosecution against him in January, he gener- 
ously lent Reform the indispensable support of his Irish 
votes in the Commons. 

If ever an Act of Parliament saved a country from 
revolution, Scotland was so saved by the Reform Bill. 
Although in temper, creed, and outlook on life the people 
were less submissive than the English, the civil institu- 
tions of the country contained in 1830 no single element 
of self-government. Scottish democracy had been 
nursed in the Kirk and in the Kirk alone ; and in the 
new age the Kirk no longer sufficed to contain so strong 
a spirit. There was not even local self-government : 
all town councils were self-elected, and the Scottish 
Burgh Act of 1833, which remedied this state of things, 
was regarded in Scotland as second in importance only 
to the Reform Bill itself. As to Parliamentary repre- 
sentation, whereas in England the elections for most 
of the counties and a few of the boroughs were real 
popular contests, the meagre handful of forty-five repre- 
sentatives that Scotland sent to Westminster were with- 
out exception chosen by small groups of privileged 
persons, generally sitting round a table. The total 
Scottish electorate was under 4000.^ At the first 

^ Jeffrey to Grey, Sept. 27, 1 831 : ' The total number of freeholders 
on the rolls for 33 counties of Scotland is 3255. But of these not less 
than 700 or so are enrolled in two or three or four different counties, 
so that the total number of individuals is not more than about 2500, 
Of these more than half are mere Superiority voters, with no property 
in the country. In the Burghs, 66 in number, the only electors are the 
magistrates, who annually re-elect each other without any control from 
the inhabitants. Their whole number is about 1440.' Whereas in 



274 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Edinburgh election after the Reform Act ' people 
stared at the very sight of the hustings, all from curiosity, 
many with delight, some with unaffected horror. This 
was the first time the people had ever exercised the 
elective franchise.* ^ 

The man whom Grey had selected to preside over 
Scotland during the dangerous period of transition 
into the new era was the man who had done most to 
prepare the change in evil days gone by, Jeffrey, the 
editor of the Edinburgh Review. He was the new Lord 
Advocate, the post then roughly answering to that 
of Secretary for Scotland to-day. He drafted the 
Scottish Bill in February, after his colleague and 
future biographer Cockburn, the new Solicitor-General 
for Scotland, had spent much of December and 
January in London discussing the principles of the 
new Bill with Grey, Brougham, and the Committee 
of Four.^ 

In the last half of January 1831 the Cabinet dis- 
cussed the proposals of the Committee of Four. Except 
for the ballot, there was singularly little opposition to 
the principles of the Bill, once Brougham's incipient 
rebellion against the total abolition of rotten boroughs 

England each county and borough returned two members, in Scotland 
nearly all the shires returned one each, and burghs were grouped together 
to return one member for each group. For details of old Scottish 
representation, see Political State of Scotland in 1788, by C. A. Adam, 
1887, and Porritt, The Unreformed House of Commons. 

1 Cockburn 's Jeffrey, i, 318, 339. 

2 This is proved by the (MS.) correspondence of Jeffrey and Grey 
from December to February. We there learn that Jeffrey also went to 
see Brougham on the subject of the Scotch Bill, at Brougham Hall, 
in Cumberland, in the middle of January. Finally, on February 20, 
Jeffrey writes to Grey : ' I have now the honour of submitting to your 
Lordship a very rough draft of the Bill referring to the Parliamentary 
Representation of Scotland. The unseemly form in which it is sent 
can only be excused by the desertion of the only amanuensis in whom I 
could perfectly confide before I made my last additions.' 



THE NEED FOR SECRECY 275 

had been firmly suppressed by Grey.^ Palmerston, 
Lansdowne, and Richmond, the chiefs of the ' moderate * 
party, seem to have grumbled more against the Bill after 
it had been brought before the public, than during 
these preliminary counsels in the secrecy of the Cabinet. 
Like the King, they were persuaded by Grey, who had 
great influence over them all, to regard it as a con- 
servative measure designed to save the threatened 
constitution and to put the question to rest. And like 
the King they were only gradually aroused to the enor- 
mity of what they were doing, by the unappeasable 
fury of the borough-mongers after the provisions of 
the Bill became known. At any rate it was only in 
April that Palmerston began appealing to Grey to modify 
the disfranchisement clauses.^ 

To prevent a premature outburst of Tory rage from 
frightening the King and the moderates in the Cabinet 
before they were irretrievably committed, was one of 
many grave reasons for secrecy during this critical 
period, and it is to the credit of all concerned how well 
the secret was kept to the very last day. Several of 
the ' Grey ladies ' were made partners in the secret as 
amanuenses, to prevent the employment of clerks. 
Durham's wife and eldest daughter had helped to 

1 On January 24 Grey writes to Durham, then too ill to attend 
Cabinets : ' I find from Althorp that there is Hkely to be more difficulty 
than I thought about Reform. Upon his saying to Brougham that he 
was glad to find there was so great a concurrence of opinion, he answered 
that he had great objection to the abolition of the close boroughs ; that 
they were by no means the worst parts of the representation ; that there 
would be no means for getting seats for persons in the Government, etc. ; 
he had hinted at this in the general discussion, but I thought had been 
satisfied by my answer, that whatever the inconveniences might be these 
boroughs could not be maintained. On this point I cannot give way. 
If he perseveres, he may throw us over with the King.' 

' Correspondence (MS.) between Palmerston and Grey, April- 
May, 1 83 1. Durham's letters to Grey, 183 1-2, also show that Lans- 
dovpne and Richmond constantly exerted a similar pressure. But Grey 
was always adamant against modification. 



276 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

make copies of the report of the Committee of 
Four.*- 

After the Bill had run the gauntlet of the Cabinet, 
Grey went down to Brighton on Sunday the 30th of 
January to unfold the measure to the King. It was 
potentially the most critical day in the whole history 
of Reform, for a refusal on the King's part to agree on 
some vital point must have led to a crisis, at a time when 
neither the Government nor their Bill had yet attained 
the consistency and popularity required if a crisis was 
to be faced. The resignation of the whole Cabinet, 
shaken by simultaneous failure on other questions, 
or a split between Brougham and the moderates on one 
side and Grey, Althorp, and Durham on the other, might 
easily have occurred if the King had exercised his 
admitted right of preliminary veto on the Bill. As it 
was, all went well. But he wrote to Grey four days 
later that if the ballot or universal suffrage had been in 
the Bill he would have refused permission to bring it 
in — a prohibition which Grey acknowledged as * a 
command he was bound to obey.' ^ Such was then the 
custom of the constitution. 

It is probable that Grey would have failed if it had 
been necessary for him to obtain the King's consent to 
the Bill in the previous November. William had been 
much attached to Wellington, and his first sentiments 
towards his new Ministers had been those of misgiving.^ 
But in a few weeks he had been won round to an equally 
sincere confidence in Grey.* As their long correspond- 
ence shows. Grey was at infinite pains, without ever a 
touch of sycophancy, to conciliate his royal master by 
unfailing courtesy and attention, which, coming from 
so imposing a nobleman, notorious for his independence 
in relation to previous sovereigns of great fame, was 

1 Althorp, 296, note. 

' William's Correspondence, i. g6-j, 106. 

3 See p. 378, below. 

^ E.g. letter of Jan. 12, 1831, William's Correspondence, i. 47. 



GREY PERSUADES THE KING 277 

flattering to one who was, by nature and experience of 
life, only a retired Admiral. 

William was more easily courted, because his 
theory of constitutional propriety, the opposite of that 
of his father and brother before him, forbade him to 
listen to Tory advisers and favourites, so long as he had 
a Whig ministry. Even the Queen, who disliked the 
Whigs and was not over civil to the Grey ladies, was not 
at first permitted to talk politics to her husband. This 
new reading of the constitutional duty of the sovereign 
to his Ministers was fostered in the King's mind by his 
private secretary Sir Herbert Taylor, a man of no political 
prejudices and great political instinct, to whom the 
British constitution owes much of its development along 
the paths of peace.^ 

The King was prepared to hold the balance between 
Whigs and Tories, so long as each according to their 
rival methods helped him to defeat the * extravagant and 
mischievous projects ' of the Radicals. His fixed idea 
that the Radicals wished to overset the throne, which 
made him suspect and dislike the uncompromising 
Durham in a manner only too apparent, was turned by 
Grey's more skilful management to the advantage of the 
Liberal cause. The Prime Minister persuaded the King 
that only a large measure of Reform could save the in- 
stitutions of the country, especially the throne, from 
Radical assault. Ninety years have shown the substantial 
truth of this view, as contrasted with the Tory prophecy 
that if the Bill passed there would soon be ' No King, no 
Lords, no inequalities in the social system ; all will be 
levelled to the plane of petty shopkeepers and farmers; 
this not perhaps without bloodshed, but certainly by 
confiscations and persecutions.' ^ When the King called 

^ Taylor said to Denis Le Marchant : • I should have opposed the 
Bill in every stage had I remained in the House of Commons. But I 
see that it is for the King's interest that it should be carried, and I have 
done my best to assist the Ministers accordingly ' {Althorp, 434). 

2 Croker (ii. 113) to Sir Walter Scott, April 5, 1831. 



278 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

the Bill * an aristocratical measure,' ^ the Tories laughed 
bitterly and accused Grey of playing upon his simplicity. 
Yet in persuading the King that the Bill would save the 
throne and the aristocracy and prevent bloodshed, Grey 
spoke his own honest belief, which turned out to be 
correct. 

There was, however, one aspect of the Bill which 
the King entirely misunderstood. He did not foresee 
that the * aristocratical measure ' would be regarded as 
confiscation and revolution by the class and type of men 
with whom he himself had most natural affinity ; still 
less that it would lead to a conflict between the two 
Houses of Parliament in which the People, whose inter- 
ference he dreaded and deprecated, would finally thrust 
him aside from the post of umpire and act in that usurped 
authority with an extreme vigour. Yet even on this 
point Grey did not deceive him. The King was deceived 
by his own simplicity and did not raise the question until 
it was too late. 

And so, on the anniversary of the execution of 
Charles I, his so different successor consented to ' the 
Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill.' ^ Next 
day Grey wrote to his wife from Brighton : 

Immediately after my arrival I had my interview with the 
King. Nothing could be more satisfactory than the result. 
He has approved of everything ; and we now can propose our 
Reform with the full concurrence both of the Cabinet and the 
King. 

1 Parker's Peel, ii. 178. 

2 Grey's letters printed in Brougham's Memoirs, iii. 93, and William'^s 
Correspondence, i. 91, prove that the long, decisive interview took place 
late on Sunday, January 30. But Grey apparently saw the King again 
on the subject of the Bill, handing in documents, on January 3 1, unless 
that date in William's Correspondence, i. 94, is an error for January 30. 
The King appears in these interviews to have given provisional assent 
to the substitution of the j^io for the ^^20 borough franchise, which 
Grey appears to have warned him might have to be done, and which 
was done more than a fortnight later. See p. 27 1, above, and William's 
Correspondence, i. iii. 



UNCONSCIOUS OF THEIR DOOM 279 

The month of February had still to roll away, bring- 
ing with it every sort of failure in Parliament and the 
country, while the popularity and prestige of the Ministry 
decreased daily.^ But Grey's spirits remained buoyant 
and serene, for he knew that he had a panacea for all 
these minor troubles. He had cut out, in front of his 
party's march, a clear path through that Reform jungle 
in which both friend and foe had expected to see him 
miserably entangled. Men who had known him too well 
as the hesitating and pessimistic leader of opposition, 
always trying to avoid responsibility and action, could not 
believe that he had stepped quietly forward and plucked 
the flower safety from the nettle danger. The Tories, 
wholly unconscious of their own impending doom, were 
almost sorry for ' poor Lord Grey.' Croker wrote to 
Lord Hertford that the Reform plan of the Cabinet was 
' members to half a dozen great towns,' and to Wellington 
that * our successors are at loggerheads, not on one, but 
on every measure. It is expected that we shall be sent 
for. Poor Lord Grey is, they say, harassed to death.' 
On February 20 the opposition leaders met at Peel's 
house, and decided to allow the not very terrible Reform 
Bill that they expected, 'to make its first appearance 
without serious resistance,' that is, not to divide on the 
First Reading, which Lord John Russell was to move 
on Tuesday, March the First.^ 

1 See pp. 255-7, above. ^ Croker Papers, ii. 97, 103, 108- 



CHAPTER III 

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE BILL KING, COMMONS, AND 

PEOPLE MARCH TO OCTOBER I 83 I 

' Never before were the Whigs bold, or the Reformers prudent.' — 
HoBHOUSE, iv. 92. 

Between the Strangers' Entrance to the present House 
of Commons and the Central Lobby, men quicken 
their pace to run the gauntlet of two opposing rows of 
marble orators, who still gesticulate against each other 
unappeased, across the floor of the passage. That pas- 
sage represents in situation and dimensions St. Stephen's 
Chapel, the old House of Commons and its lobby, on 
the foundations of which it was rebuilt after the fire of 
1834. Though not the very cradle, it has been the 
nursery and schoolroom of Parliamentary government. 
Pent in that narrow measure were the whole wisdom and 
wrath of the Long Parliament. And there, as the last 
great drama in the history of the Chamber before it 
^as destroyed by fire, the Reform Bill won its way, 
through storms of passion which but for Grey's insight, 
act, and courage might well have been the prelude to 
a second Civil War. 

Of the members who thronged to hear Russell 
introduce the Bill on March i, 1831, not more than 
two in three could find seats by cunning or by force. 
That ill-ventilated, ill-lighted, uncomfortable, sacred 
room, affectionately compared by its victims to * the 
black hole of Calcutta,' had never witnessed a more 
anxious and uncertain moment in history than when 

280 



LORD JOHN READS THE LISTS 281 

Lord John's head was seen to emerge above the table, 
and his cool, small voice began to drop out bit by bit 
the fateful secret, so well kept to the very last hour. 

As he proceeded, the more advanced Whigs and the 
small Radical group known as ' the mountain,' of which 
Burdett and Hobhouse were the chiefs, cheered louder 
and louder in amazed delight. The Tories laughed 
and cheered in derision. The great mass of the Whigs 
sat rather quiet, not knowing yet what to think of such 
a sudden turn of affairs. Russell had announced 
in general terms that sixty English rotten boroughs 
were to lose their two members apiece ; and forty- 
seven more, one member each. Having finished with 
England, he was about to pass on to Wales, Scotland, 
and Ireland, when * an honourable member called on 
him to name the disfranchised boroughs.' Thus chal- 
lenged, he read the lists. And so, as an afterthought or 
chance of the debate, befell the most famous scene of 
all ; the particular is more poignant than the general, 
and it was only when the names of the doomed boroughs 
were read out that the meaning of the great change was 
felt by all. The members whose seats were marked for 
the sacrifice lay back and laughed in bitter contempt 
as * a little fellow not weighing above eight stone ' ^ 
swept away one by one the venerable legacies of 500 
years. 

It was thought by many, that night and ever after, 
that if Peel had risen when Lord John sat down, and 
had declared that the measure was a revolution and that 
he would at once divide the House against its being read 
for a first time, the Bill would have been defeated and 
the Ministers turned out, before the unpopularity which 
their various failures had won for them in the first three 

^ Two months later Sydney Smith wrote to Lady Holland : ' I met 
John Russell at Exeter. The people along the road were very much 
disappointed by his smallness. I told them he was much larger before 
the Bill was thrown out, but was reduced by excessive anxiety about 
the people. This brought tears to their eyes.' 



282 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

months of office had been converted into the enormous 
popularity which the Bill brought them as soon as it 
was made known to the nation. But the Tory leaders, 
expecting to the last a very moderate measure, had come 
to the House agreed among themselves to allow the 
first reading.^ Peel was by nature incapable of sudden 
decisions and lightning strokes. Neither was he, with 
his solemn manner and secretive temperament, in close 
personal touch with any section of the divided Tory 
party, which only gradually came together as the 
months went by under the compelling force of the 
Reform Bill. 

As far as the wishes of that House of Commons were 
concerned, the life of the Ministry would not have been 
worth a week's purchase. But outside, the people took 
up the Bill with a shout. From Land's End to John o* 
Groat's, as fast as the coaches brought in the news of 
Lord John's speech, all was astonishment and rejoicing. 
Petitions from municipal bodies, and from the inhabitants 
of cities, parishes, and rural districts began to pour in 
to Westminster, in support of the Bill ; no member 
could walk the streets or receive letters from the country 
without reading clear proof of its amazing popularity. 
In the course of a week, many a Whig member like 
Campbell, who had been appalled as he listened to Lord 
John, saw that after all his chiefs had made a coup, and 
became himself inspired with the infectious breath of 
the popular enthusiasm. 

The first full expression of the national purpose, 
with its threat scarcely veiled in the appeal to the con- 
servative forces to avoid revolution by surrender, was 
uttered as early as the second day of the debate by an 
unofficial member, Macaulay of the Edinburgh Review, 

^ Croker, il. io8, no. Wellington wrote: 'We had previously 
determined not to oppose the first reading, and we could not alter our 
course after the measure was produced. But if we had known what 
the measure would be, we should have opposed it ; and our opposition 
would have been successful ' {Despatches, etc., viii. 293). 




Croker Peel Wetherell (speaking) 

O'CONNELL, Hume (on third bench against the pillars) 

The Bill in Committee. Wetherell speaking in the 
small hours of the morning. 

From " H.B." Political Sketches. 



PEEL, WETHERELL, WELLINGTON 283 

whose oratory now first made its mark in the 
House.^ 

To divert the torrent of popular approval, it served 
little for Peel on the following night to enter a nice plea 
against abolishing the working-class representation at 
a few places like Preston and Westminster, while he 
stultified his argument by declaring against any increase 
of that representation, which alone could have made it 
effectual. Peel's whole later life showed that he should 
have been for the Bill. Unconsciously he was in a 
false position ; furious with the Ministers, but on ill 
terms with his party and with himself, he remained 
throughout the long struggle a respectable but not very 
effectual figure. 

The men who best represented before the world 
the deep and genuine passions of the defence, were 
Wetherell in the Commons and Wellington in the 
Lords. Already, in the first week of the debate, 
Wetherell with his uncouth figure, wild gestures and 
grimaces, fierce, humorous invective, prolixity in obstruc- 
tive tactics, legal astuteness in detail, and utter sincerity 
of belief that old England was being destroyed by fools 
and knaves, stood to friend and foe for the core of old 
oak in the Tory resistance. The famous gap between 
Wetherell's jacket and trousers became the oriflamme 
of war. But the silent Duke, with his House of Lords' 
vote held in reserve, was in fact a more formidable 
bulwark, for it was not in argument or even in passion, 
but in constitutional privilege that the opposition to 
the Bill was strong. 

The fury of the Tories was directed against Grey. 
He had deceived them. They had confidently looked 
to ' poor Lord Grey ' to bring in a mild measure that 
would enrage the Radicals, divide his followers, and 
bring about his fall, or possibly, as some of them wished, 

1 So little known was he as a politician till the Reform Bill debates, 
that Hansard consistently spells his name wrong (Macauky) until 
August 1 83 1, 



284 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

his coalition with themselves. He had, instead, intro- 
duced a measure that was in effect an appeal to the people 
to strengthen his hand against both Houses of Parlia- 
ment, and the appeal was proving successful. And this 
from the man who had a few years before declared in 
the House of Lords that he would * stand by his order ' ! 
The words were now cast in his teeth. His idea of 
* standing by his order ' was, indeed, not theirs. His 
plan was to save their estates in the country and their 
seats in the Upper Chamber, by wresting from them the 
irregular privilege of nominating members to the House 
of Commons. ' It seems,' he wrote of the Tory peers 
on March 20, * as if God has deprived these men of 
their understanding. If they could succeed, they would 
ensure their destruction.' 

A story became current that a headless man — some 
said one of Grey's own ancestors, beheaded for high 
treason, others said a Girondin victim of the guillotine — 
had appeared to the Prime Minister to warn him of the 
fate of those who stir up revolution. Caricaturists 
played on the theme, and it became the talk of the town. 
The substratum of fact lay in this, that, half a dozen 
years before, in a house he then inhabited in Hanover 
Square, Grey thought he saw * a pale face look at him 
round a column,' and * imagining it to be a person, he 
rushed to the place and then sought behind all the 
window curtains in that and the adjacent rooms with- 
out success.' The family appears to have rejected the 
supernatural hypothesis.^ 

When the first night's debate in the Commons had 
passed without catastrophe. Grey was well pleased 

1 Sir T. Dick Lauder's letter of Nov. 20, 1837 {Hozvick Papers), 
narrating what Grey had told him that day. Further details as to his 
daughter, Lady Georgiana Grey, having seen ' somebody in the room ' 
a few days before her father's adventure, are narrated on the same 
authority, and are confirmed by Lady Georgiana's own letter to the 
present Lord Halifax in 1894. Lady Georgiana in 1894 connects the 
incidents with a servant ' soon afterwards dismissed for stealing.' 



THE WORKING MEN AND THE BILL 285 

with the reception of the Bill. * I saw Lord Grey,' 
wrote Princess Li even on March 2, * when the first 
report of what had passed in the House was brought 
to him. He believed, or said he did, that it was a great 
triumph, and repeated with self-satisfaction : "/ have 
kept my word with the nation ^ ' 

On March 4, only three days after Lord John's 
speech, he already saw that the Bill had had the effects 
that he intended. ' The public,' he wrote on that day 
to Lord Wellesley, * is now completely with us, and the 
first effect of what we have done has been to set aside, 
at once, all the clamour for Universal Suffrage, annual 
Parliament and Ballot.' 

Grey's belief that the cry for Universal Suffrage 
had been silenced by the Bill was true as regards the 
middle-class Radicals, but it was only partially true of 
the working men. They were divided between the 
instinct to support the Bill as the first * great inroad 
in the accursed system,'^ and the instinct to demand 
instead a measure that would enfranchise themselves 
and not the middle class alone. When in October the 
Lords threw out the Bill, their fury against aristocratic 
dictation brought them down effectively into the political 
arena. But in the first half-year of the controversy, 
many working men stood apart, viewing the Bill as a 
middle-class affair. 

On the other hand, their ablest and most popular 
leaders and organisers were from the first moment active 
on behalf of the Bill, and succeeded in creating early an 
apparent, and ultimately a real, alliance of the middle and 
working classes. That alliance proved the most per- 
suasive argument for the Bill with the higher powers, 
because it threatened revolution or radical reform as 
the alternative. 

Cobbett was a Bill-man heart and soul. Though 
the Government still persisted in its vain and foolish 

1 Hunt, In the House of Commons, April 12, 1831 ; a speech well 
worth studying for some aspects of working-class feeling about the Bill. 



2 86 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

resolution to prosecute him,^ he wrote in his Twopenny 
Trash for April some generous words about Lord Grey 
as * the real and sole author of this Reform, who has 
never had any hand in any of those measures which have 
caused our sufferings.' It was now indeed that Grey's 
long forty years at opposition gained him the popular 
confidence that nothing else could have given, and with- 
out which the State might well have suffered shipwreck. 

Equally important with Cobbett's, though less in 
the public eye, were the influence and work of Francis 
Place, who from his library in Charing Cross had long 
directed the more reasonable part of the Radical propa- 
ganda throughout all England, and who was equally 
esteemed by middle and working class progressives. 
The unexpected events of March i had converted 
him in an hour from lifelong and bitter contempt for 
the * gabbling Whigs,' to an ardent zeal for co-operation 
with his ancient enemies. He and Attwood of the 
Birmingham Political Union now placed the best 
Radical organisations of the country at the services 
of the Ministers and their measure. Hobhouse and 
Burdett, the ' gentlemen Radicals,' strong Government- 
men since March i, formed the link between the plans 
of Ministers and the activities of Attwood and Place. 

The avoidance of civil strife during the struggle 
for the Bill, and perhaps therefore the issue of the con- 
test, depended much on the wisdom of the Home Secre- 
tary, Melbourne. Personally, he disliked the measure, 
but he thought the national demand for it would not be 
denied, and he supported it as a loyal member of a Govern- 
ment dependent on its success.^ In the interests of 
the Bill and of public order he did not disdain to con- 
sult frequently with Place and Attwood through the 
medium of his secret agent, the mysterious Tom Young. 
Anti-democratic as he was at heart, and as he had shown 
himself in dealing with the rural labourers the last 

1 See p. 254, above. 

2 Melbourne Papers^ 140; Greville, April i, 1832. 



THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE BILL 287 

winter,^ Melbourne was shrewd enough, so long as the 
Reform Bill was the question of the day, to seek the 
advice of the men who led the democracy, to guide 
his administrative dealings with the Political Unions 
and with the Radical movement in general.^ 

The greatest vigour and active support for the Bill 
from beginning to end came from the middle class — 
a term that then covered all grades of society, from the 
humblest clerk or village shopkeeper up to the wealthiest 
monied magnate in the country. The master manu- 
facturers were as yet seldom allied by matrimonial, 
social, or political ties with the aristocracy and the 
* landed interest.' The law did not allow them to shoot 
game ; they were not invited to the country houses ; and 
very few of their class could obtain seats in Parliament. 
They regarded the ' landed interest ' with something 
of the jealousy that the French capitalists in 1789 felt 
for the privileged noblesse \ and the distaste was mutual. 
But most of all the multitudinous lower middle 
class, the world of Cruikshank and of Dickens, was 
stirred like the ocean by the attraction of the Bill, and 
by all that the ten-pound franchise seemed to offer. 
The agitation as conducted by Attwood, at once moral, 
orderly, and enthusiastic, brought the colour of romance 
and idealism into the drab surroundings of their lives. 
The fervour of their revivalist religion, and something 
more from sunnier skies, was heard in the Reform Bill 
song which they sang in their tens of thousands : 

See, see, we come ! no swords we draw. 
We kindle not war's batde-fires. 

By union, justice, reason, law. 

We'll gain the birthright of our sires. 

And thus we raise from sea to sea 

Our sacred watchword. Liberty ! 

Even the squires were perhaps half of them for the 

^ See pp. 252-3, above. 

2 Wallas' Place, chaps, ix.-xi. ; and Place Papers, B.M. ; Torrens' 
Melbourne, i. 368, 385-6. 



288 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Bill, though with less enthusiasm and with many mis- 
givings. Not a few country gentlemen, Whigs by old 
allegiance, were ready to ' trust Lord Grey ' and hoped 
to beat their Tory neighbours at the next election ; 
others wisely dreaded revolution or radical reform as 
the only alternative to the Bill ; all were to some extent 
consoled by the increase in county representation, in 
place of rotten boroughs in which they had no personal 
interest. And when in August 1831 the Government 
was compelled by an adverse majority of squires in the 
Whig House of Commons to extend the county fran- 
chise to tenants-at-will at ^50 a year,^ it was felt that 
the gentry would always be able, by their influence with 
these tenants, to carry the rural seats. And in fact 
the ' landed interest ' conducted the Government until 
1846, when the ten-pound householder revolted and 
repealed the Corn Laws. 

And so we read of ' half the country gentry ' of 
Lincolnshire attending a meeting in favour of the Bill.^ 
Peel himself wrote dolefully to Croker on the difficulty 
of ' bringing round the country gentlemen ' to see the 
dangers lurking in the measure ; ^ while in Grey's opinion 
' a very large majority ' of the gentry supported it in 
October.* Even the leaders of this class, the lay peers 
in the Upper House, were not so unevenly divided. 
There was indeed a large majority among the old nobility 
in favour of the Bill, and it was only the recent partisan 
creations by Pitt and his successors, many of them the 
price of rotten boroughs, which, added to the Bishops' 
vote, led the country to the brink of civil war. 

^ This was the famous ' Chandos clause.' Ministers were beaten 
in resisting it, by 84, at a time when they had a majority for the Bill 
as a whole at 136. So strong was the 'landed interest' among the 
Whig members who passed the Reform Bill. Before the Reform Bill 
the county franchise had been confined to ' forty-shilling freeholders^ 
largely independent of the squires. 

* Sir Robert Heron's Notes, p. 193. 
3 Croker, ii. 137 (Nov. 11, 1831). 

* William^ s Correspondence, i. 376. 



SQUIRES, FARMERS, CLERGY 289 

Upon the whole, the conduct of the country gentry, 
great and small, at this national crisis, when they supplied 
most of the leadership to both sides, was a credit to their 
patriotism, good sense, and power of vision. 

The farmers, like the squires above them, were 
divided on the Bill. Tory broadsheets warned them 
that Reform would bring in its train Repeal of the Corn 
Laws,^ but the appeal was only in part successful. 
Probably it was not very generally believed, for the 
Prime Minister and the majority of his Cabinet were 
against Repeal. 

There was but one class opposed to the Bill with 
anything like unanimity — the clergy of the Church of 
England. On both sides of the Reform Bill con- 
troversy, sectarian zeal played almost as much part as 
social and political feeling. It was generally expected 
that Reform of Parliament would, if carried, lead to a 
revision of all ecclesiastical privileges — Church rates, the 
Church monopoly of Oxford and Cambridge, perhaps 
tithes, and possibly the establishment itself. In the anti- 
Jacobin days, when the upper and middle classes and 
most of the working men — pre-eminently the mobs 
of Birmingham and Manchester — had been violently 
against Reform, the Dissenters had fought and fallen 
under the banners of Fox and Grey.^ And though in 
1 83 1 the issue seemed to many Englishmen to have 

^ E.g. Reform and the Farmers, 1831 : 

' A farmer would Reforming go. 
Whether he got any good or no. 
The House was reformed, and it took a shy 
At the price of com, which it thought too high. 
The very worst day since the farmer was bom 
Was the day they voted Free Trade in com.' 

Moral. 

' A Reforming farmer, as sure as a gun. 
Cannot care a pin for Number One \ ' 
* See pp. 33—7? above. 



290 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

changed, the Church clergy thought, not unreasonably, 
that it was still exactly the same. 

The Church in those days leant heavily on the secular 
arm for the support which in our time she seeks in her 
own legitimate influence. She had, to a very large extent, 
left the population of the new industrial districts to dis- 
sent, to anti-clerical secularism, and to an ignorance more 
debased than any form of belief or unbelief. And even 
in the old country parishes, where the Church was then 
seen at her best, Miss Austen's charming clergy, though 
often scholars and always gentlemen, were only the 
squires' younger sons put into the family livings, in no 
marked way devoted either to their sacred calling or 
to their humbler parishioners. The Church had very 
largely lost her former hold on the masses. Men thought 
that she took too much and gave too little. 

Conscious of their alienation from the multitude, the 
clergy sought to dig themselves in against the flood-tide 
of the coming era by perpetuating the old Tory regime. 
The * parson magistrate ' was often a fierce partisan, 
and his victims caricatured him savagely. The fact 
that it was a clergyman who read the Riot Act before the 
Yeomanry charged the Reformers' meeting at Peterloo 
had not been forgotten a dozen years later. Some of 
the priesthood had earned only too well their popular 
title of ' black dragoons.' ^ The distribution of the 
revenues of the Church among the clergy themselves, 
in those days notoriously unfair, was denounced by 
Radicals attacking ' Old Corruption,' and by farmers 
grumbling that their tithes went to feed idle mouths. 

The Dissenters, forced to contribute in the Church 

1 ' A parson magistrate wrote to the Home Office in 1817 to say 
that he had seized two men who were distributing Cobbett's pamphlets 
and had them well flogged. ... A man caught taking a peepshow 
round the country containing a coloured print of Peterloo, who fell into 
the hands of the Vicar of Chudleigh, got off more lightly, being sent to 
the House of Correction as a vagrant till the Sessions ' (Hammond, 
Town Labourer, 72; see also id. pp. 262; 268-9). 



CHURCH AND DISSENT 291 

rates to the upkeep of fabrics where they and all their 
works were denounced, and excluded from Oxford 
and Cambridge, looked to Reform to remedy these 
inequalities, and more generally to give them a direct 
share in the councils of the nation. The part taken 
by Dissenting ministers in political agitation for 
the Bill aroused the scornful alarm of the class that 
had so long monopolised power. One of the Duke 
of Wellington's correspondents writes to him from 
Chelsea : 

The address was voted to be presented to Lord Grey, for 
offering it to the King, by two Dissenting, as they call them^ clergy- 
men — one named Tracey, or Stacey, who afterwards exhibited 
from a cart to harangue the people, and who keeps, or is kept 
by, a small Anabaptist chapel in a shabby, mean street which 
runs out of Paradise Row.^ 

Nearly all Dissenters were now Reformers ; but, 
though Toryism was the rule among the Church clergy, 
it was no longer general with their congregations, who 
in some cases walked out of church rather than listen 
to a sermon against the Bill. 

On March 22, 1831, the Second Reading of the 
Bill was carried in the Commons by one vote, amid scenes 
of excitement and enthusiasm best known to posterity 
from Macaulay's letter to his friend Ellis.^ 

Thirty members for rotten boroughs in Schedule A 
had voted for their own total disfranchisement, and 
eighty against it. The members for boroughs in 
Schedule B, to be half-disfranchised, had divided thirty- 
two for the Bill and fifty-two against. So numerous 
were the Whig rotten boroughs willingly sacrificed to 
their patrons' sense of what was patriotic and just. 

Ireland had carried the Bill. Her members had 
voted fifty-eight for and thirty-eight against. While 

1 Wellington Despatches, viii. 47. 
* Trevelyan's Macaulay, chap. iv. 



292 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

the Ministry was prosecuting O'Connell in Ireland, 
O'Connell was saving the Ministry in England. The 
real sympathy and understanding which Grey had shown 
for Ireland in years gone by, when he had been powerless 
to help, had now become atrophied. He who had 
refused office again and again as a protest in favour of 
Catholic Emancipation, now stood in the way of any 
further step in the reconciling process. His Irish clock 
had stopped in 1829. In forming his administration 
in November 1830 he had not consulted O'Connell, 
directly or indirectly, about Ireland. He now took his 
views from Stanley rather than from Duncannon and 
Burdett, who were plying him with letters on the need 
of dropping the prosecution against O'Connell, and of 
a closer understanding with the Liberator for the sake 
both of Irish tranquillity and English Reform. To 
Burdett, Grey replied : 

I acknowledge that O'Connell has rendered good service 
on the Reform Bill ; but his measures to incite in the people 
of Ireland a spirit of the bitterest hostility, not only to the 
Government, but to the people of England, the Saxons, as he 
calls them, have always succeeded, as in a regular course, to 
his more moderate conduct in Parliament (April 3, 1831). 

Yet in fact, O'Connell's whole influence in the 
ensuing months was used on the side of tranquillity in 
Ireland, as the Lord-Lieutenant himself acknowledged. 
Finally, all that the Government would do was just not to 
put in prison the man who could, with a word, have 
defeated their Bill and turned out their administration. 

Grey depended on O'Connell not only for his 
majority, but for the peace of Ireland, with which the 
fortunes of the Bill were closely involved. In March 
and April the Prime Minister was working patiently, 
and at first unsuccessfully, to prepare the King's mind 
to dissolve Parliament. One of the chief reasons that 
induced the King for several weeks to refuse to have a 
General Election was the fear that it would lead to grave 



RESULT OF THE MAJORITY OF ONE 293 

disorders in Ireland. And if O'Connell had, in fact, 
been playing the Whigs false, such fears would not 
have been groundless. 

Fortunately, the majority of one for the Second 
Reading weighed in the King's evenly balanced mind 
as an argument for appealing to the constituencies on 
the Bill, rather than change his Ministers. If the 
majority of one had been the other way, it is almost 
certain that he would have refused to dissolve ; Grey 
would then have resigned, and the crisis that finally 
came in May 1832 would have come a year earlier, 
under conditions even more dangerous for peace and 
progress, since the people would then have been con- 
fronted not only by King and Lords, but also by a small 
majority of the House of Commons, who might have 
enabled a Tory Ministry to be formed with at least some 
chance of continuance.^ 

For a month Grey kept on plying the King with 
conservative arguments for dissolution : 

The excitement that now exists is directed to what I think 
a safe and legitimate object. In the event of dissolution, it 
would act in support of King and Government. If a contrary 
direction is given to it, you probably will see associations all 
over the country. 

He also appealed to the King's sense of fair play, pointing 
out : 

That this Government is now without its natural support, 
the Parliament having been chosen by the late Ministers, and 
all the seats usually at the command of the Ministers being now 
filled by their bitterest opponents. 

Grey knew exactly how to treat William IV, and 
took infinite pains about it. It was fortunate that it 
fell to him, out of all the Cabinet, to conduct the corre- 
spondence and the interviews with their Royal Master. 

^ Winiam's Correspondence, i. 176, 183, note. 



294 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

On April 19, 1831, the crisis came. The Govern- 
ment was defeated by eight votes in a very full house, 
on General Gascoyne's plausible amendment that the 
number of members for England and Wales should not 
be reduced.^ Grey's long preparation of the King's 
mind now bore better fruit than he had himself expected. 
He had thought to be out of office as a result of the 
King's refusal to dissolve,^ but on April 21 William 
wrote to him that, to prevent the threatened resignation 
of his Ministers, ' he consented to dissolution ' as the 
lesser of two evils. This letter marked the real solution 
of the crisis. But it only took effect in a dramatic and 
spectacular secondary crisis on the following day, which 
to the world at large and in the memory of mankind will 
always represent the crisis itself. 

The Tories, who knew that a General Election would 
be fatal to them, believed almost to the last moment that 
the King would never consent to dissolve. And when 
at last rumours got about that he was yielding to 
Grey, they determined to use their existing majority in 
both Houses to intimidate him. On the evening of 
April 21, the Commons carried against Althorp a vote 
which had the effisct of preventing the Government 
obtaining the supplies already voted. In the Lords, 
Wharncliffis gave notice that he would next day move 
an address to the King against a dissolution. Next 
morning (April 22), at 11.30, Grey and Brougham 
waited on the King with a view to prevent these tactics 
from being further developed. 

The King, who had already consented the day before 
to the principle of dissolution, was eager to meet his 
Ministers' wishes that he should prorogue the Houses 
in person that very afternoon. Only so could the Lords 
be prevented from carrying Wharncliffe's motion against 

^ The original Bill had proposed a considerable reduction in the 
total number of members in the House, Gascoyne's amendment was 
in principle incorporated in the final Bill that passed in 1832. 

* See Appendix F, p. 382, below. 



THE DISSOLUTION, APRIL 1831 295 

dissolution, which would indeed have no constitutional 
force, but ' might have had a bad effect in the country ' ; 
fortunately, William regarded it with indignation as an 
encroachment on his prerogative. If Commissioners 
were sent to prorogue the Houses for a dissolution, it 
was the privilege of their Lordships to keep the Com- 
mission waiting at the door till they had voted on any 
motion actually before the House. But if their Sovereign 
came in person, he could, of course, interrupt the debate, 
and if he then and there prorogued Parliament, Lord 
WharnclifFe's motion could never be passed. Such a 
demonstration of Royal support for the Bill and for the 
Ministers was certain to affect very favourably the result 
of the General Election. 

With a sailor's readiness for action, William declared 
he would go at once. * I'm always at single anchor,' he 
said. He swept aside the objections of flurried officials 
of the Palace that the horses' manes were not plaited 
and that the state-coachman and horseguards were not 
ready. ' My Lord,' he said to the apologetic Grey, 
* I'll go, if I go in a hackney coach.' ^ 

At two o'clock the Lords assembled in tumult, 
heated on one side with exultant triumph, on the 
other with baffled fury. Grey was absent, bringing 
along the King. Brougham kept rushing in and out of 
the Chamber over which he presided, bouncing up and 
down on the woolsack, and crying out that the Com- 
mons ' had refused supplies.' The Duke of Richmond, 
if more dignified, was even more provocative to his 
old Tory associates, whose tempers fairly boiled over. 
Londonderry shook his fist at Richmond, and was held 
back by his coat-tails. The Chancellor was hooted. 

It is impossible [says the decorous page of Hansard] to 
describe the confusion, the noise, the impetuosity that prevailed 

1 Grey told this to Creevey next day (Creevey, April 23, 1831 ; 
Hobhouse, iv. 108). See Appendix F, below: 'The Dissolution of 
April 1 83 1.' 



2 96 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

from one end of the House to the other. The Peeresses present 
seemed alarmed. Some of the Peers were, as it appeared in the 
confusion, almost scuffling ! 

Through the uproar, the cannon could be heard 
booming out the approach of the King. A great swell 
of cheering marked the passage of his coach all the way 
from St. James's to Palace Yard. * A loud voice,' says 
Hansard, ' was heard sounding out God save the King. 
At that instant the large doors were thrown open and 
His Majesty entered the House.* As he ascended the 
steps of the throne it was noticed that his crown, put on 
in haste, was precariously balanced on one side of his 
head. Behind him the tall figure of Lord Grey, carry- 
ing the great two-handed Sword of State like a mediaeval 
headsman, seemed to the imagination of the Tories to 
be attending as the King's executioner and theirs.^ 
The gentlemen of the House of Commons, no less angry 
and excited than the Peers, came thronging and shoving 
into the chamber at the summons of Black Rod. 

* My lords and gentlemen,' said the King, * I have 
come to meet you for the purpose of proroguing this 
Parliament, with a view to its immediate dissolution.* 
The great Tory party bowed beneath the weight of 
those words as helplessly as the Whigs just 150 years 
before, when merry King Charles had played them a 
like trick at Oxford. But King William added what 
no Stuart could have said : ' I have been induced to 
resort to this measure for the purpose of ascertaining 
the sense of my people.* 

All through the dissolution crisis, now issuing so 
triumphantly. Grey had been calm and cheerful, in 
strong contrast to his fretfulness in former years, and 
to the recurring despondency of many of his present 
colleagues. * I hear of nothing but Lady Holland's 
croaking ; others are as bad,' he wrote to Holland. 

1 Greville, April 24, 1831. 



THE GENERAL ELECTION, 1831 297 

' Our friends do us the greatest mischief. If this 
measure is lost it will be by their cowardice.' Did 
Lord Holland show his wife this note, which only a 
Prime Minister would have ventured to write ? 

Throughout the elections. Grey's letters show him 
in the highest spirits, and no wonder. If there is any 
occasion in British history since 1688, on which it is 
legitimate to speak of * the People ' as having been all 
on one side, the election of May 1831 is the case. 
Not only was a majority for the Bill of one wavering 
individual converted into a majority of 136 in pledged 
supporters, but the Tory members who survived repre- 
sented little more than so many close boroughs, and 
stood nowhere for any mass of population. At Malmes- 
bury, for instance, the successful candidates dared not 
put in an appearance for fear of the inhabitants of the 
place, who were engaged in burning them in effigy. 
The close borough system was indeed so water-tight at 
election time, that the Reformers made no further gains 
among the boroughs in Schedules A and B, beyond 
four seats that Ellice bought up from Lord Yarborough.^ 

But in the towns, great and small, where any real 
contests were possible, the anti-Reformers were anni- 
hilated. Newark showed the Duke of Newcastle that 
he could no longer *do what he liked with his own,' 
though he had evicted thirty-seven tenants for voting 
against him at a recent election, and had boasted of the 
feat. Even Liverpool, the seat of a popular Orange 
and Tory tradition, for once returned two Reformers. 
Everywhere Whigs laid stress on the enthusiasm, and 
Tories on the violence, of the popular demonstrations. 

But the Whig victory was most striking of all in the 

^ Compare the analysis of the Second Reading division on July 6, 
In Hansard, iv. 920, to the analysis of the division on March 22, in 
Hansard, iii. 818-24. The Tories accused Lord Yarborough of 
defrauding his niece, whose trustee he w^as, by hiring out her four seats 
for this Parliament to men pledged to vote away her property. A nice 
point in casuistry ! 



298 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

counties, where most of all under the old system of repre- 
sentation, * the voice of England was heard through her 
freeholders.' In the late division on the Second Read- 
ing, fifty-three English county members had voted for, 
and twenty-seven against, the Bill ; but after the elections 
only six Tories sat for English county seats. The Whig 
Ministers had themselves underestimated the popularity 
of their cause. Both Graham in Lord Lonsdale's 
Cumberland, and Althorp in Northamptonshire, were 
forced by the common people, against their own judg- 
ment as to the probabilities of success, to accept a second 
Reform candidate as colleague, and in both cases the 
pair of Reformers was triumphantly returned. 

In Northumberland, where in 1826 Lord Howick 
and Beaumont had both been handsomely beaten,^ and 
where in 1830 Beaumont had secured one seat and the 
Tory Bell the other, the Duke of Northumberland durst 
not in 1 83 1 run a Tory candidate at all, though it was 
said that he had subscribed ^^ 100,000 to the central 
party funds out of pure zeal against the Bill. Howick 
and Beaumont made up their old family quarrel and were 
returned together unopposed. Howick's Committee 
were able to give back a considerable sum of money 
that had been subscribed by ' the working people out 
of their wages ' to meet the expenses of a contest. 

Colonel Coulson [writes Howick, on May 2], who has so 
much influence in the west of the county, and who last time 
came down at the head of near three hundred freeholders on 
horseback to vote for Bell, endeavoured to secure the same votes 
for him now, and instead of succeeding was happy to escape 
without personal ill-usage, of which he. Colonel Coulson, was 
in great danger. 

In Scotland, where the representation was even more 
of a farce than in England, the fury of the people was 
proportionately greater. Jeffrey, who was responsible 
for order in that land of fierce passions, wrote to Grey 

^ See pp. 199—200, above. 



GREY AFTER THE ELECTION 299 

several times during the elections on the extreme 
danger caused on the one side by the violence of the people, 
and on the other by the love of the Tory burgh and 
county authorities for calling out the military. That 
tendency he repressed to the utmost extent of his powers, 
with the result that nothing very deeply to be regretted 
occurred, except that Sir Walter Scott's gallant and sorely 
tried spirit was hurt by the tempestuous hostility of 
his own ' brave lads of Jeddart.' The fact that nine 
Scotchmen out of ten were passionately for the Bill made 
no difference at all to the action of the close bodies with 
whom the elections rested. The county representation 
remained unchanged, and the Whigs gained seven seats 
in the burghs only because Ministerial influence was 
this time on their side. 

In Ireland, in spite of the King's fears, the elections 
went off more quietly than in any other part of the three 
Kingdoms, and Anglesey, the Lord-Lieutenant, wrote 
to Brougham that * nothing can be better than the 
behaviour of the agitators.'^ Half a dozen more seats 
were gained there for Reform. 

Grey's personal and constitutional position was pro- 
foundly affected by this amazing General Election. 
Mr. Butler has thus summed it up ^ : 

Grey's position was in fact unique in the constitutional 
history of his time, and ranks him as in a sense the first of 
modern Prime Ministers. He was not the King's choice, like 
Pitt, whose triumph at the polls in 1784 the late election recalled, 
nor was he the choice of Parliament. He stood, after the elec- 
tion of 1 83 1, directly on the support of the people. In this, 
as in so many points, the struggle for the Reform Bill looks 
forward, not to the decades which immediately followed its 
passing, but to the more democratic system of the twentieth 
century. But eighty years ago the organisation and exploitation 
of popular feeling were strange and exceptional. Lord Grey 
accepted them reluctantly enough, but they raised him for the 

^ Campbell, i. 513. 

« The Passing of the Great Reform Bill, J. R. M. Butler, pp. 228-9. 



300 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

moment to a pinnacle no Minister had reached since the days 
of Pitt, and which it is doubtful if Peel or Palmerston, or even 
Gladstone, ever attained after him ! 

All this is perfectly true. Grey understood it only 
in part, but he was by no means wholly blind to the 
change wrought by the election. The following letter 
of his wife's reveals his mind in the hour of electoral 
triumph, and his prognostications of the future of the 
Bill in the new Parliament. 

Car seems pleased with the state of things, which he says 
is as good as possible. He adds, ' I do not dislike the violent 
opposition of the high Tories or that of the bishops, tho' it 
may create some trouble and excite strong feelings in the pro- 
gress of the Bill. But with a decided majority in the House 
of Commons and the power of the Minister added to the strength 
we had before in the House of Lords, I do not fear the result.' 
For my part, I shall enjoy his attacking the bishops, who will 
no doubt afford him an opportunity of doing so. 

Only in one quarter did the Prime Minister perceive 
a falling-ofF ; there were signs that the King was * out 
of spirits,' and ' uneasy * about the element of democracy 
that the elections had introduced into the solution of the 
Reform problem. The violence of the mobs shocked him. 
In that respect, if Ireland had been better, England had 
been worse than he feared. And he was beginning to scent 
the danger of strife between the two Houses, which he 
deprecated above all things. Nevertheless, Grey still 
found that towards himself his master's ' kindness and 
confidence do not appear at all diminished.' ^ It was 
indeed at this juncture that William insisted on the 
Prime Minister accepting the Order of the Garter, * as a 
decisive proof of his unqualified confidence.* ^ 

^ Parker's Graham, i. 112; William's Correspondence, i. 260-76. 

2 Grey writes to Holland on May 25, 1831 : ' I need not say to you that 
this was totally unwished for by me, and quite unexpected, not a word 
having been said about a blue ribband, since I refused it when v^e first 
came into office. Coming in this way it was impossible, I thought, 
again to refuse it.' 



PALMERSTON THE BACKSLIDER 301 

From this time forward the King continued to urge 
him to modify the Bill, in order to avert a conflict with 
the Lords. But on this Grey was adamant from first 
to last. Palmerston, too, had written to him a fortnight 
before the dissolution, arguing for large concessions, so 
as to get the Bill through the old House of Commons ; 
and during the election,when he unsuccessfully canvassed 
the dons at Cambridge, he wrote to Grey from that seat 
of wisdom, ' I have scarcely met six people who approve of 
our Bill ! ' ^ Above all Palmerston wished the ;^io quali- 
fication raised. On May 1 5 Grey replied rather tartly : 

I really do not quite understand what you mean by saying 
that we are hurrying on too fast. I am not conscious that we 
have altered our pace from the beginning. We brought in the 
Reform Bill, and are pledged to carry it through. 

At the end of May came the first of a long series of 
Cabinet crises on the Bill, in which only Grey's firm- 
ness and good temper prevented a split. Palmerston 
and Lansdowne asked for a modification of the Bill ; 
Melbourne and Richmond at heart agreed with them ; 
while Durham's * impracticability ' and ill-temper, when 
on the warpath against these backsliders, endangered 
the cohesion of the Ministry. ^ On May 29 the 
Cabinet met to consider a letter from the King, recom- 
mending alterations in the Bill to conciliate the Peers. 
Durham was fortunately away ill. 

1 Most dons in those days had to become clergymen of the Church 
of England. Grey wrote to Wellesley on May 5 (Add. MSS., 373 11) : 
' The elections continue to prosper everywhere, except at Cambridge. 
These Parsons, it seems, have fears for the property of the Church. Do 
you think the course they are pursuing the best calculated to preserve it ? ' 

2 Grey to Holland, May 28, 1831. Other zealous reformers tried 
to impress on Durham the necessity of ministerial unity, and of carrying 
with them the less advanced section, which was Grey's special task. 
Thus Duncannon writes to Durham : ' You must consider Lord Grey's 
position. Necessity joined him to many whose opinions differed from 
his own, and who had a great gulp to make before they could agree to 
such a measure as the Reform Bill.' 



302 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Lord Grey [so Holland wrote to Durham that evening] 
spoke very decisively against making any alteration in the 
franchise. His expressions were so strong that they silenced 
Palmerston, and Lansdowne admitted that it was too late to 
make any change. I should say that, with the exception of 
Palmerston, all present agreed that a very probable consequence 
of attempting to conciliate the House of Lords by concession, 
would be to lose the House of Commons, and Lansdowne 
expressly said that this would be absurd to the highest degree. 

Before the new Parliament met in the middle of 
June, Lord John Russell and Stanley had become 
members of the Cabinet. During the General Election, 
Lord John's father, the Duke of Bedford, that formid- 
able buttress of the Whig Ministry and repository of 
Foxite tradition, had written to Grey : ' I think John 
ought to be in the Cabinet before Parliament meets 
again.' ^ The claim was just, though not specially 
on the ground put forward by the Duke, that if he was 
again in charge of the Bill in the Commons he should 
no longer have a mere * half responsibility.' For in the 
new Parliament, Lord John, though he had been made 
a full Cabinet Minister, soon voluntarily relinquished 
the effective charge of the Bill in Committee to the most 
hardworking, tactful, and popular of all Parliamentary 
managers. Lord Althorp. 

On July 6, 1 8 3 1 , the new Bill, materially the same 
as the old, passed its Second Reading in the Commons 
by a majority of 136. Then began the two hot summer 
months of battle in Committee, where every line in the 
Bill and every name in the schedules was fought by the 

1 Lord Grey, in his answer of May 22, says, with truth : ' I think 
you cannot doubt my sincere desire to put Lord John forward. I have 
given some proof of this by putting the conduct of the Reform Bill into 
his hands, upon the discussions of which he had generally attended the 
meetings of the Cabinet. The diiRculty [of promoting him to the 
Cabinet] has been on account of the numbers, for I do not think he could 
be introduced without Stanley.' When the two were added, the numbers 
of the Cabinet rose to fifteen. 



THE NEW BILL IN COMMITTEE 303 

Tories, ably if somewhat extravagantly led by Sir Charles 
Wetherell. Under his legal guidance, the House of 
easy-going country gentlemen began to learn the mean- 
ing of obstruction and night sessions prolonged to 
broad daylight. The ill ventilation of that overcrowded 
chamber was not suited to such a change in Parliamentary 
methods. ' John Russell is ill,' wrote Greville on 
August 4, * nearly done up with fatigue and exertion 
and the bad atmosphere he breathes for several hours 
every night.' A little later Macaulay wrote : * I believe 
there are fifty members of the House of Commons who 
have done irreparable injury to their health by attend- 
ance in the discussions at this session. Wetherell's 
cursed lungs seem to be in as good condition as ever.' 
Cobbett, a tough bit of oak himself, afterwards declared 
that service in that most incommodious of houses 
required ' not only perfect health but great bodily 
strength.' It was well that the fox-hunting breed who 
then crowded the benches on both sides had the neces- 
sary stamina. Althorp's sweetness of temper was never 
ruffled, nor was his slow judgment ever at fault. Even 
that fierce opposition could seldom be angry with him.^ 
Meanwhile the people were in the mood to think 
that, after their verdict at the elections, the last word had 
been said. They were furious at the prolonged debate, 
clamouring for the business to be cut short and the Bill 
to be passed into law forthwith. Wetherell became 
the most unpopular man in the country. Large sections 
of society, particularly in the industrial north, seem hardly 
to have contemplated as a possibility that the Lords 
would, at the end of all this talk and delay, throw out 

1 On July 6, JeiFrey, previously accustomed to the society of Edin- 
burgh rather than of London, writes : * I have had two or three more 
Cabinet dinners. The most agreeable are Lord Grey's, where there 
are always ladies, and we were very gay there last Sunday. I am still 
as much in love with Althorp and most of his colleagues as ever, and 
feel proud and delighted with their frankness, cheerfulness, and sweet- 
blooded courage.' 



304 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

the measure to which alone the nation looked for 
deliverance.^ 

As the Bill drew nearer to the Lords, Grey had much 
to trouble him. As early as June 2 he realised the 
strong probability that it would be thrown out there in 
spite of the General Election, and was already discussing 
with Holland the creation of half a dozen peers. ^ But, 
while he feared that that would be insufficient, he saw 
grave objections to the policy on a large scale. And the 
King was becoming every day more difficult to manage. 

In August and September troubles came thick upon 
him. The dread anxiety of another European crisis, 
when first the Dutch and then the French troops entered 
Belgium, threatened his whole domestic structure of 
Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform with the terrible 
possibility of a war with France. But again his and 
Palmerston's friendly firmness prevailed to induce the 
French to withdraw across the frontier, after they had 
driven back the intruding Dutch. ^ 

At the same time he was, in his own domestic circle,* 
distressed at the illness and misfortunes, and assailed by 
the resultant ill temper, of Durham, the son-in-law whom 
he loved both for his own sake and for Lady Durham's. 
When in November 1830 he had raised Durham to 
the Cabinet as Privy Seal — contrary to the wishes of 
some of his colleagues, but very wisely in the public 
interest — his son-in-law had written to him in terms 

1 Al thorp actually wrote on October 10, three days after the Bill 
had been thrown out : ' It is quite wonderful, but I believe the people 
never had an idea that the Bill was in the slightest danger ' {Althorp, 355)- 

2 Letter to Lord Holland, June 2, 183 1. 

3 See p. 353. 

* About midsummer in 1831 the Greys had moved into a suburban 
residence at East Sheen, between which and Downing Street the Premier's 
life was passed. Throughout the period of the Reform Bill, Grey's 
private secretary was his son-in-law, Charles Wood, afterwards first 
Viscount Halifax, well known in the Whig Ministries of the Victorian 
era as a man wise in counsel. 



DURHAM AND GREY 305 

of warm gratitude.^ Grey had then committed to him 
and to Russell the drawing up of the Reform Bill, and 
while that work was on foot, Durham's temper had 
remained good. But as the summer wore on, he suffered 
tortures from neuralgic pains in the head, while his 
beloved and noble child, Charles, known to posterity as 
the ' Master Lambton ' of Lawrence's most beautiful 
picture, was slowly dying of consumption. The un- 
fortunate father's temper was soured by anxiety and 
pain. Forgetting what he had written to Grey at the 
time, he conceived a belated grievance because he 
had been given the Privy Seal instead of a great adminis- 
trative office. Yet how could he have made his name 
immortal and his country safe by drawing up the right 
Reform Bill, if he had been all the last winter engaged 
in learning the mysteries of the Foreign Office or 
Admiralty ? Still more unworthy of the true greatness 
of his mind, was his constant pestering to be raised from 
a Baron to an Earl. On these grounds, according to 
Grey's children, he refused sometimes to speak to their 
father for days together. He seems to have felt no 
gratitude for having been put at the head of the Reform 
Bill Committee, and he came at length to speak to others 
of that appointment by which he and the world had 
profited so much, as if Grey had done it and everything 
else connected with the Bill in a fit of absence of mind ! ^ 
His letters to Grey of August 23 and 25, 1831, 
about the earldom and administrative office, are written 
in the style of a man unnerved by neuralgic pain and 
parental anxiety. There is evidence in his long corre- 
spondence with Grey from 18 16 onwards, that his health 
and temper took a very decided turn for the worse in 
the course of 1831. 

^ P. 263, above, note; and Appendix D, p. 379, below. 

* Hobkouse, iv. 178, a passage that contains many inaccuracies and 
leaves a most unpleasant impression of the way he talked of his father- 
in-law and colleagues in 1832 ; Grey was most generously loyal to him, 
whatever some of his colleagues may have been. 



3o6 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

On September 24 that year the long-expected 
blow fell : Charles Lambton died. The Bill was 
already in the Lords, and in ten days' time Grey would 
have to propose the Second Reading in a speech of the 
first importance. But neither his own grief nor his 
devotion to Louisa and her husband were stinted on 
that account. On the last day of September he wrote 
to Holland : 

I see poor Louisa and Lambton [Durham] every day ; there 
is no mitigation of their suffering, and her affectionate, despairing 
look really breaks my heart. 

And again to the Princess Lieven : 

Why did the blow fall on this heavenly boy, whilst I and 
so many others who would be no loss to the w^orld are spared ? 
I can think of nothing else, and am quite unnerved for the battle 
I have to fight. 

But the great world moves on, regardless of what 
might have been, intent only on what shall be ; and the 
Prime Minister is only the first servant of the King and 
Kingdom. ' Whilst the funeral cortege of his favourite 
grandchild was slowly making its way to the north, 
Lord Grey, on October 3, moved the Second Reading of 
the Bill in one of the most memorable speeches ever 
delivered in the House of Lords.' ^ 

Time past and time to come seemed to converge 
upon that debate : Grey began it by reminding the peers 
of his own youth, when he had made motions for Reform 
in the Lower House, in the presence of ' some of the 
greatest men this country has ever produced ' — Fox, 
Burke, and Pitt ; his grave and ' beautiful ' eloquence of 
an older time enthralled an enthusiastic young Tory in ; 
love with all things grand and old, William Ewart ] 
Gladstone, who sat out that great debate of five nights 

^ Stuart Reid's Durham, i. 264. 



GREY, LORDS AND BISHOPS 307 

for * nine or ten hours every evening,' till ' compelled by- 
exhaustion ' to retire.^ Grey's speech was universally 
admired, but the Tories found it uncompromising. 
They objected to the threat of * something infinitely 
stronger and more extensive ' as the alternative to the 
Bill, still more to the hint of possible * civil war,' and the 
certainty of grave consequences, if it was rejected. In 
language however decorous, the Prime Minister pro- 
claimed the rigid popular doctrine of * the Bill, the 
whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill.' But otherwise he 
advanced the most palatable, conservative arguments 
for the measure upon which he insisted.^ Grey spoke of 
himself as being ' more than any other man responsible ' 
for bringing forward the Reform question in general, 
and this measure in particular, nor did anyone dispute 
the claim. 

In one of the closing passages of his speech he 
appealed directly to the Bishops not to render the 
Church odious to the mass of the people by taking a 
principal, possibly a decisive, part in throwing out the 
Bill. The words were courteous, and Grey declared 
himself ' sincerely attached to the maintenance of all 
the rights and privileges of the Church,' as well as to the 
' purity of her doctrines and soundness of her discipline.' 
Referring to the Bill against Pluralities recently intro- 
duced by the Primate, he continued, in a passage of 
which a garbled version was soon to fly over the country 
like the fiery cross : 

Those right reverend Prelates have shown that they were 
not indifferent or inattentive to the signs of the times. They 
have introduced, in the way in which I think all such measures 

^ Morley's Gladstone, Bk. i., chap. iii. 

2 The Bill, Grey said, ' would give to the nation contentment, and 
to all future Governments the support of the respectabihty, the wealth, 
and the intelligence of the country ; which is the surest ground of stability, 
and nothing short of which can enable a Government to make a stand 
upon the principles of the constitution.' ' A bit-by-bit amelioration 
would have left the question as unsettled as before.' 



3o8 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

ought to be introduced, namely by the leading members of the 
Church itself, measures of amelioration. In this they have 
acted with a prudent forethought. They appear to have felt 
that the eyes of the country are upon them ; that it is necessary 
for them to set their house in order, and prepare to meet the coming 
storm. I implore them to follow, on the present occasion, the 
same prudent course. 

Young Gladstone does not appear to have been 
shocked by this passage, and read at full it is entirely 
unobjectionable. But after the Bishops had voted for 
the rejection of the Bill by twenty-one votes to two, the 
word went round the country that Lord Grey had bidden 
the Bishops ' to set their house in order.' The popular 
campaign of mob outrage against the Bishops that 
autumn had for its watchword this one phrase, torn from 
its context amid the decorous periods of the Prime 
Minister.^ 

Though Lyndhurst spoke against the Bill, Brougham's 
oration was the only one in the debate that was matched 
by common consent with Grey's. Grey told Althorp 
that the Chancellor's speech ' united all the excellencies 
of the ancient with those of modern oratory.' It cer-r 
tainly was a fine speech, marred by the hyperbole of the 
climax, when, like Burke with his dagger, the Lord 
Chancellor exceeded the modesty of nature by kneeling 
down as he pronounced the final apostrophe : 

* I warn you, I implore you, yea, on my bended knees, 
I supplicate you — Reject not this Bill 1 ' 

The degree of genuflexion must ever remain a 
matter of historical dispute, or at least of individual 
conjecture. The friendly Times came to his rescue by 
reporting that * here Lord Brougham slightly bent his 
knee on the Woolsack,' while the witty malice of his 
rival and biographer tells us that : 

^ ' He gravely told the bishops to put their house in order, and in 
one month from that time the palace of one bishop was in flames ! * 
(Wetherell, in the House of Commons, December 17, 183 1.) 



THE LORDS THROW OUT THE BILL 309 

He continued for some time as if in prayer ; but his friends, 
alarmed for him, lest he should be suffering from the effects of 
the mulled port, picked him up and placed him safely on the 
woolsack.^ 

The impartial Hansard is silent. 

At the end of the fifth and last night of the debate, 
October 7, 1831, or, rather, about five in the morning 
on October 8, Lord Grey rose to make his reply, which 
in its vigour and spirit recalled to veterans the days 
of his fiery youth. ' The group of young members 
of the House of Commons collected behind the throne 
were, in the warmth of their admiration, with difficulty 
restrained from cheering.* 

His audience was moved bv his answer to certain 
personal criticisms, both at the opening where he de- 
fended the consistency of his long career as a Reformer, 
from the days of the Friends of the People until that 
hour ; and at the close, when he declared : 

I had no desire for place, and it was not sought after by me : 
it was offered to me under such circumstances that nothing but 
a sense of duty could have induced me to accept it. I have lived 
a life of exclusion from office — I had no official habits — I possessed 
not the advantages which those official habits confer — I am fond 
of retirement and domestic life, and I lived happy and content 
in the bosom of my family. I was surrounded by those to whom 
I am attached by the warmest ties of affection. What then 
but a sense of duty could have induced me to plunge into all 
the difficulties, not unforeseen, of my present situation ? What 
else, in my declining age, 

' What else could tempt me on these stormy seas. 
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease ? ' 

Then, after a final brush between Lyndhurst and 
Grey, on the vexed question of Lyndhurst's former 
views on Reform, they went to the fateful division. 

^ Campbell's Lyndhurst and Brougham, 398. Needless to say, that 
amusing volume is not a safe guide in either of its parts. 



310 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

' I stood in a group with Grey and Holland,' wrote 
Campbell ; * the latter was a little excited, but Grey was 
tranquil and smiling, as if they had been dividing on 
a road Bill. There was no cheering, as with us in the 
Commons upon a great division, and no stranger would 
have imagined that a measure was decided that might 
occasion the land to be deluged in blood.' ^ * There 
were some faint cheers,' wrote another spectator, * at 
the announcement of the majority of forty-one against 
the Bill, but the general aspect along the Tory benches 
was rather of anxiety than exultation.' ^ It was past 
six o'clock, and the mob outside had fortunately melted 
away before dawn. As the tired statesmen trooped out 
into the streets on that sombre morning, 

' the very houses seemed asleep, 
And all that mighty heart was lying still ! ' 

1 Campbell's letters, written at the time (published in his Auto- 
biography), are, of course, much better evidence of facts than many of 
his statements in the Lives of the Chancellors. 

^ Althorp. 350, 352. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE BILL KING, PEERS, AND PEOPLE — 

OCTOBER I 831 TO APRIL 1 832 

* I know only two ways in which societies can permanently be 
governed — by public opinion and by the sword. I understand how 
the peace is kept at New York. It is by the assent and support of the 
people. I understand also how the peace is kept at Milan. It is by 
the bayonets of the Austrian soldiers. But how the peace is to be kept 
when you have neither the popular assent nor the military force — how 
the peace is to be kept in England by a Government acting on the 
principles of the present Opposition, I do not understand.' — Macaulay 
IN THE House of Commons, Oct. 10, 1831. 

The country was on the verge of anarchy, and one 
false step by the Ministers would have dragged it into 
the abyss. The whole social body was sick with many 
deep, internal maladies, little considered and less under- 
stood by the State physicians of that day. They had, 
however, produced a remedy which many of the people 
believed in as a panacea, and the great majority welcomed 
as the first step to improvement ; and now the cup had 
been dashed from the lip. The one feeling that the 
starving operatives shared with their employers, whom 
they regarded as their tyrants, was a passion for the 
Bill to destroy the aristocratic rule which they both 
detested. If that one hope of their despair, that one 
reconcilement of their deep divisions were now to be 
abandoned, chaos was come again. 

In October 1831 the substitution of a Tory for a 
Whig Ministry would not have led, as it would in 
May 1832, to a systematic rebellion of the big towns, 

3" 



312 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

prepared and ready organised for the act, but to blind 
and unrelated paroxysms of the rage and vengeance of 
warring classes which must have been destructive in 
their course and would probably have been disastrous 
in their outcome. 

The one real chance for the Tories of successfully 
resisting the Bill was to provoke a class war, which would • 
end in rallying all the * haves ' to close their ranks in 
self-defence against the * have-nots.' The likelihood 
of such a disaster was greatest in the first three months 
after the throwing out of the Bill by the Lords on 
October 8, 1831. No one who has not studied the 
Home Office manuscripts for that terrible winter can 
quite realise how great the danger was. But Grey, 
little as he knew of that unplumbed abyss of misery and 
despair, knew that the danger lay below, and therefore 
made no false step on the heights above. 

Before he left the House of Lords on the morning 
of October 8, the Prime Minister wrote a note to the 
King giving the numbers of the division that had just 
taken place. In a few hours he received an answer 
from William, declaring that the majority of forty-one 
was so great as to preclude the possibility of a creation 
of peers to carry the Bill, but earnestly desiring the 
Ministers to remain in office. 

After a Cabinet held the same morning. Grey wrote 
a letter to Sir Herbert Taylor ^ accepting the veto on 
making peers, and foreshadowing his own continuance 
in office, but only on condition that the King would 
support his Ministers in * carrying a measure not less 
efficient ' than the lost Bill, * though altered in its pro- 
visions ' ; this was ' absolutely necessary for the pre- 
servation of the public peace.' 

^ His letters to Sir Herbert, the King's secretary, were meant to 
be shown to the King. They were an informal way of addressing 
William. 



'NO LESS EFFICIENT' 313 

And so, even before going to bed after the throwing 
out of the Bill, and long before the House of Commons 
or the people had had time to indicate their wishes, Grey- 
had outlined the Fabian tactics which saved the country 
that winter. He would not resign, and he would not 
whittle down the Bill. But he would make immaterial 
changes in it, to save the face of peers wishing to drop 
resistance next time it came up to them. The useful 
formula of the * no less efficient ' Bill saved the credit 
of the Government with the country. On one point, 
indeed. Grey was mistaken ; he did not yet perceive that 
in the long run his * no less efficient ' Bill could only be 
carried by a creation of peers or by the imminent threat 
thereof. By the new year he had altered his opinion 
under the tutoring of events, and meanwhile his error 
had no serious consequences. The fatal mistake in 
October would have been to demand peers, and to go 
out on the King's then certain refusal. 

The policy, peculiarly Grey's own, of the ' no less 
efficient ' Bill was opposed by Palmerston, who, on 
October 9, wrote Grey a letter protesting that the only 
way to pass the Bill through the Lords was to make 
it less * extensive,' and this course, Palmerston added, 
would please ' the great bulk of the gentry of the country,' 
and many who had voted for the last Bill in the Commons. 

Next day Grey replied to him ; 

My information leads me to believe that the middle classes 
who form the real and efficient mass of public opinion, and 
without whom the power of the gentry is nothing, are almost 
unanimous on this question, and animated by a settled resolu- 
tion to press it forward. Of the gentry, too, I am persuaded 
that a very large majority are now impressed with corresponding 
sentiments. . . . [On] a suspicion that we are shrinking from 
the principle on which we have been hitherto acting, . . . 
public confidence would be at once withdrawn from us. We 
should be compelled to retire in disgrace. [Then either Welling- 
ton would come in and pass] a plan certainly not less extensive 
than ours [or] the more probable event would be that the people 



314 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

would take the matter into their own hands, and then God 
knows what might be the result. 

On October lo, a few hours after Grey had written 
this letter, the House of Commons carried Lord 
Ebrington's vote. of regret for the Bill and confidence 
in the Ministers by a majority of 198. Macaulay's 
fiery oration, including the passage quoted at the head 
of this chapter, reminded the House, with a bluntness 
that his eloquence saved from giving offence, of the 
questions of physical force that underlay and might at 
any moment overset the nice constitutional balancings 
of the King, Lords, and Commons. 

Lord Althorp, whom Ministers agreed to put up 
as their sole spokesman in the Commons on this critical 
evening, made the famous announcement that he only 
remained in office in order to pass a measure as efficient 
as the late Bill. Palmerston and the moderates again 
stood committed against their will. 

While the House of Commons approved by so great 
a majority of the resolution of the Ministers to remain 
in office on these terms, the country was calling to them 
in an agonised voice not to abandon their post. Fear 
of anarchy combined with fear of losing the Bill to make 
men dread Grey's resignation more than any other event. 
If the Duke took office, there were no plans for defeating 
him by revolutionary action, such as were ready in the 
following May. Attwood and the Birmingham Political 
Union, who on that latter occasion took the lead in 
organis'ng resistance, confined themselves in October 
to holding a monster meeting of 100,000 men, then 
a marvel without precedent, and exhorting the great 
public, that already looked to Birmingham for guidance, 
under all circumstances to observe the law. Attwood him- 
self told the council of the Union that unless they kept 
strictly within the letter of the law, the Duke, on accepting 
office, would break up their Union and arrest their leaders.^ 

^ H.O. Papers f 44, 25. 



THE EDGE OF THE VOLCANO 315 

Since the middle class as yet shrank from preparing 
an orderly resistance, it was all the more certain that if 
Lord Grey resigned there would be riot and outrage, 
and indeed insurrection, partly political and partly 
economic, on the part of the working men. 

On October 10 Jeffrey wrote to Grey as regards 
Scotland : 

There is the same concurrence and deep conviction on the 
part of all my informants, that the resignation of the Ministry 
or the abandonment of Reform would be instantly productive 
of the most frightful consequences in all the populous and 
manufacturing districts, an open defiance of authority, and 
most probably acts of lawless violence by combined and deter- 
mined multitudes. 

In England, the first week after the rejection of 
the Bill was sufficiently alarming. In London, Peel's 
* new police ' saved the situation, though large mobs 
broke the windows of the Duke of Wellington and the 
other Tory peers. But in the rest of the country there 
were only the old, inefficient constables, little changed 
since the days of Dogberry and Verges ; lukewarm 
' specials,' anxious ' not to do anything against the Bill ' ; 
and a few thousand soldiers who spent that terrible winter 
dashing about from place to place on their thankless, 
indispensable task, keeping down the spasmodic local 
outbreaks of the red terror — cursed, stoned, wearied out, 
but never failing in patience and duty. 

At Nottingham, on October 10, the mob burnt 
the Castle because it was the property of the Duke of 
Newcastle, prominent against the Bill and famous for 
his political evictions. They also burnt several factories, 
as the symbols of capitalist tyranny. The magistrates 
on the nth declared 'the town and vicinity are in a 
state of insurrection, and the whole force we have to 
oppose to the rioters is not above eighty men of the 
King's troops.' Yet such was the political passion 
against the borough-mongers felt by the respectable 



3i6 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

middle class of Nottingham, that even after this awful 
experience they petitioned the Government to dismiss 
the Duke of Newcastle from the Lord-Lieutenancy of 
the Shire.^ 

All over the country there were riots. Peers who 
had voted against the Bill went in fear for their property 
and even for their lives, though there was no actual case 
of murder. Their houses in town and country were 
not infrequently attacked. Noble lords, posting back 
to their country homes from Westminster, were hooted 
and hustled as they changed horses at the inn doors, 
where they were wont to be the objects of obsequious 
admiration. In Darlington, a lady driving beside Lord 
Tankerville was nearly killed by a paving-stone, as the 
family coach raced out of the town with its panels stove 
in and the floor covered with missiles of all sizes .^ 

But the rage against the Bishops was fiercest of all. 
In spite of Grey's warning, they had voted twenty-one 
to two against the Bill. The cry to exclude them from 
Parliament rose loudly not only from the working men 
but even in the middle-class Times, which was strongly 
opposed to the ultra Radicals. The anti-clerical violence 
of the mobs recalled the days of the Long Parliament. 
The Bishops of Durham and Exeter dared not go about 
their work in their dioceses. On the Fifth of November 
a mitred figure almost everywhere took the place of 
Guy Fawkes. Even in haunts of ancient peace, like 
Worcester, where as the Radicals complained * there 
were so many Black Slugs living about the purlieus 
of the Cathedral,' that it was * uphill work ' to form 

1 H.O. Papers, ^2, 15, where the Duke of Newcasde, in his letters 
to Melbourne, accuses some of the magistrates of ' haranguing the 
mob ' about the Lords and the Bill, and ' indifferently suffering all 
these things to take place.' He himself could not (he said) ' venture 
personally into the manufacturing districts; I should either be murdered, 
or raise a riot by appearing.' 

2 Malmesbury (Memoirs), p. 29. Lord Tankerville, though an old 
Whig, and a friend and neighbour of Grey, could not swallow the Bill. 



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MRS. PARTINGTON'S MOP 317 

a Union, they chalked * Judas Iscariot, Bishop of 
Worcester,' on the Cathedral walls, and in moments of 
crisis partisans of the Bill paraded the streets of the town 
in noisy triumph.^ 

But there was one clergyman who had no share 
either in the unpopularity of his brethren or in the brutal 
feelings of many of his fellow Reformers. At a crowded 
meeting, held at Taunton on October 11, 1 83 1, to call on 
the Ministers to remain in office, Sydney Smith did much 
to preserve the peace of the country, by relaxing its 
savage fear and rage into confident good-humour. The 
Duke of Wellington was likened unto Dame Partington, 
sweeping back the Atlantic with her mop : 

The Atlantic was roused. Mrs, Partington's spirit was up. 
But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The 
Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs, Partington. She was excellent at a 
slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest. 
Gentlemen, be at your ease — be quiet and steady — you will beat 
Mrs. Partington. 

As the reverend gentleman on the platform began, with 
dramatic force, ' trundling his imaginary mop with an 
air of resolute determination and an appearance of in- 
creasing temper,' a storm of laughter swept over that 
vast and highly-wrought assembly that had met in no 
pleasant mood. The Press and the cartoonists and the 
talk of men soon set people laughing over ' Dame 
Partington and her mop ' under almost every roof in 
Britain. Such laughter was like light in a darkened 
landscape, bearing hope of a peaceful victory. There 
was no such kindly laughter heard in France in 
1789. 

Sydney Smith was a dear friend of the Grey family, 
and one of the acts of patronage which gave Grey the 
greatest pleasure had been conferring, in September, a 
Canonry of St. Paul's on this country parson of genius, 
who had waited as long and loyally for preferment as 

1 Butler, 297; H.O. Papers, 44, 25 {Pol. Unions Secret) Wore. 



31 8 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

the Prime Minister himself. In that dignified age, it 
was generally held that so great a wit as * poor Sydney ' 
could never be made a Bishop. Grey's private corre- 
spondence has allusions to the subject. ' May I add,' 
writes Lord Milton, ' without being either impertinent 
or ill-natured, beware of making Sydney Smith a Bishop ; 
do anything else for him, but it will not do to give him a 
mitre.' The proposition appears to have been regarded 
as self-evident. 

The only occasion on which Grey was brought into 
personal contact with his Radical supporters was not 
fortunate. Four days after the Bill was thrown out, 
not long before midnight, seventeen * delegates ' from 
the London parishes, headed by Francis Place himself, 
appeared without warning or appointment at Downing 
Street to request the Prime Minister to reassemble 
Parliament in seven days, and pass the old Bill by a 
creation of peers. Hobhouse, the Radical member for 
Westminster, who knew Grey and Place equally well, 
thought the domiciliary visit a mistake and badly 
staged ; some of the deputation, he wrote, ' were such 
ill-looking fellows that my friend De Vear told me he 
had got before one of them that Lord Grey might not 
see him.' ^ 

The Prime Minister, unpractised in the modern art 
of receiving democratic deputations, let them go away 
under the disastrous impression that he was about to 
introduce a watered-down Bill, though his real intentions 
were quite different. Place was very angry, but he 
never lost his head. After a few days he allowed his 
friends, Hobhouse, Burdett, and Grote the historian, 
to persuade him that even though Ministers would 
not precipitate a crisis at once, as he had wished them 

1 Hobhouse, iv. 148. Besides one major, the only delegate styled 
' gentleman ' in the deputation was the ex-joumeyman-tailor. Place. The 
rest were mostly small tradesmen ; see list in Add.MSS., B.M., 35149, 
f. 8g. 



GREY AND FRANCIS PLACE 319 

to do, the only hope for the country was to trust them, 
and that confidence was in fact no more than their 
due.^ 

The conflict of mind that we read in Place's letters 
in these critical days was going on in the mind of the 
country at large, with the same happy outcome, a deter- 
mination to trust Lord Grey, but to keep * staring at 
the Government, staring at them firmly,' as someone 
aptly said at a Radical meeting. The country saved 
itself by this decision. It was here that Grey's character 
for upright dealing had its reward in gaining him this 
extension of confidence. 

* Lord Grey's conduct has been the most open and 
manly of any Minister,' Place had written the day before 
his unfortunate deputation ; and even when he was 
most angry he confessed that he had ' unlimited con- 
fidence in Lord Grey's intention to serve his country,' 
and only doubted his judgment.^ 

Place had finally to be satisfied by a letter from Grey 
to Grote, in which the Prime Minister explained the 
need of a new Bill, as strong as the last, but with * improve- 
ments ' to afford the Peers ' an excuse for repairing the 
error of their last vote * •, or, as Grote put it, * to afford 
a colour for the deserters from the enemy who may 
be fearful at resisting the people a second time.' ^ To 
recast the Bill on these lines, and also to rest Lord Grey 
and the other Ministers who were prostrate with fatigue, 
it was necessary to postpone the meeting of Parlia- 
ment for some weeks. But the more the recess was 
prolonged, the greater the danger to the public peace, 
and it was fortunate that Grey, who feared that his own 
health would break down if they met before Christmas, 
was out-voted in the Cabinet on the subject, and that 

1 Hansard, viii. 850-1, Oct. 17, 1831, for Grey's account of the in- 
terview. Add. MSS., B.M., 35149, if. 85-91 and 96-106, for Place's 
correspondence about it. 

2 Add. MSS., B.M., 35149, ff. 84^ and loi. 
' Ibid., ff. 109-10, 112. 



320 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

an early date in December was fixed for the reading of 
the new Bill.^ 

Two incidents, unknown to the world at the time, 
illustrate the immense difficulty of Grey's position. The 
very day after the Lords threw out the Bill, the King 
actually proposed, in the teeth of the popular fury, to 
dismiss from the service, on account of a Radical speech 
at Devizes, that modern paladin. Colonel William 
Napier, then at the height of his fame as the historian 
of the Peninsular War, in which he had himself played 
so gallant a part.^ A fortnight before, William had 
wanted to cashier Colonel Torrens of the Royal Marines, 
for saying that ' The House of Lords might be placed in 
Schedule A.' 

Of course Grey would not consent, but the affairs 
show how little the King understood the temper of his 
subjects. 

It was now that the Prime Minister began to be 
seriously alarmed at the influence exerted over the King's 
opinions by the Queen Adelaide, the Ladies of the Court, 
and the FitzClarences. William had long kept these 
influences at arm's length, but they were beginning to 
tell at last. The furious attacks in the Press on the 
interference of the ' German frow,' always brutal and at 
first unjust, only made matters worse at Court and aroused 
the King's strong indignation. The Queen was deeply 
interested in politics on the Tory side, and though at 
first she observed discretion, we find her in the end 
consulting the Duke of Wellington through a third 

^ Grey was, no doubt, wrong, because the country would have 
misunderstood further postponement, but these are his arguments to 
Holland on October 30: ' After all, it is only a question of a fortnight. 
Parliament would not meet, any rate, till the first week of December. 
The sitting then would not last above a fortnight. Is it not better to i 
take the prorogation at once to the 9 th or loth of January, when we 1 
may be well prepared with all our measures to go on without further 
delay or interruption ? I am persuaded we should in the end save time.' 

* The speech can be read in his life by Bruce (1864), i. 353-7. 
He was, of course, only an officer on half-pay. 



THE BRISTOL RIOTS 321 

person as to whether the King could safely dismiss his 
Ministers,^ Already on September 27, 1831, Grey 
wrote to Holland : 

The affair of Torrens convinces me that the people who 
compose the King's private society have had some effect. [And 
on October 30J : How can I go to Brighton without an invita- 
tion ? I told you how I was received on my last two visits to 
Windsor : by the King personally with the greatest kindness, 
but he carefully avoided my coming into the presence of the 
Queen, The same thing would probably happen if I went 
uninvited to Brighton. At most I should be asked to dinner, 
and all the Queen's circle would talk about nothing for the next 
fortnight but the manner of my reception. 

Two months later he reports to his wife : ' The 
Queen civil, but her civility at the freezing point.* 

During the last three days of October 1831 
occurred the riots at Bristol. The close Tory corpora- 
tion had long been at feud with the inhabitants, and 
particularly with the members of the rather weak 
Political Union. Forces that in Birmingham were 
united to preserve order, were in Bristol at bitter enmity. 
And to make matters worse, the Recorder of the city 
was Sir Charles Wetherell ; he united that judicial post 
with his very unjudicial proceedings in the House of 
Commons, where also an attempt had been made to 
represent Bristol as hostile to the Bill, in spite of its two 
Reform members. When it was known that Wetherell 
was coming down on October 29, to make his state 
entry into the city, and administer the laws as Judge, all 
parties foretold trouble. The Mayor and corporation, 
having enlisted some young Tory * bloods ' as special 
constables to guard the procession, showed the utmost 
incapacity to meet the danger they had done not a little 

1 Wellington Despatches, viii: 16-56, 169. I do not see how 
anyone who reads the Queen's letter there, of Jan. 18, 1832, can doubt 
that she used her influence with the King against his Ministers. 



322 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

to provoke. Neither can the middle-class Reformers 
be exempt from blame ; they looked on passively at 
the triumph of a relatively small body of hooligans, so 
long as it was a matter of sacking the Mansion House 
and making Wetherell escape over the roof. Only 
when it came to opening the prisons and burning down 
the town, they pressed their services on the magistrates, 
who were too incapable or sulky to make use of them 
even then. As ill-luck would have it, the small body 
of dragoons in the town was commanded by Colonel 
Brereton, an officer nervous about shedding blood 
almost to the verge of insanity. Finally, his hand was 
forced by Major Mackworth, and a series of charges 
on the morning of the 31st restored order, but not till 
the Bishop's Palace, several public buildings, and about 
forty houses had been burnt to the ground. An eye- 
witness wrote to Lord Melbourne : ' Fifty of our 
London police would have disposed of any of the 
assemblages I witnessed.' ^ 

The Bristol riots showed everyone on what lava 
crust they were treading. Each side drew its own 
obvious political moral, and Reformers and anti- 
Reformers throughout the country held their own 
opinions more firmly in the light of the fires of Bristol. 

The winter of 183 1-2 was in every respect a por- 
tentous season. Trade was stagnant, agriculture was 
depressed. In October the cholera landed for the first 
time on British soil, in the congenial atmosphere of the 
slums of Sunderland ; in the course of fifteen months 
it took a toll of 50,000 victims from the crowded 
and insanitary hovels of the poor.^ The terror and 
religious fanaticism that it caused among an ignorant 

1 Grenfell's letter in H.O. Papers, 40, 28, where see also letters of 
the Mayor, Lieut. Claxton, Brereton, and Mackworth; Butler, 305-10. 
Mr. Stanley Weyman has a spirited and just picture of the riots in his 
Reform Bill romance of Chippinge. , 

2 England and Wales, 21,882 deaths; Ireland, 20,070; Scotland^ 
9592 (Creighton, Epidemics in Britain, ii. 816). 



THE TERRIBLE WINTER 323 

population added to the political and social horrors of 
the time. 

In the country districts * Captain Swing ' reappeared, 
and ricks blazed night after night. In December the 
insurance companies raised the premiums on the insur- 
ance of farming stock, in the disturbed districts, ' from 
two to ten shillings per cent.,' and reported that * the 
burnings at the present season far outnumber those of 
last winter ' — the winter of the rural revolt ! Near 
Devizes a pease rick was watched burning by a large 
crowd, that gave three cheers for the conflagration. 
One adviser wrote to the Home Office that the only 
way to stop arson, * which the better-intentioned among 
the labourers look upon as venial,' was to * let the body 
of the incendiary be consigned to the Surgeon for 
dissection, as in the case of murder,' since the mere 
gallows had lost its terror to starving men 1 ^ 

All over the industrial districts of the north and 
midlands there were strikes, unemployment, and violence, 
social and political. From Colne in Lancashire the 
workmen marched over the hills into Yorkshire to burn 
Gisburne Park, the seat of Lord Ribblesdale, who had 
voted against the Bill ; they wished to imitate the pro- 
ceedings in Bristol of which they had read in the papers, 
but they were stopped in time by the military. In 
Staffordshire 50,000 miners, brutalised by the slavery 
of the underground life of that epoch, were roaming the 
countryside in large bands, armed with staves, a terror 
to all men. In Shropshire, Reform Bill riots among 
the colliers were repressed by the Yeomanry.^ The 
inhuman conditions under which the working classes 
had lived during the last half century produced this 
year some bestial crimes against blacklegs, and fore- 

^ H.O. Papers, 40, 29. This was the era when the almost super- 
stitious popular horror of dissection was a grave trouble to the medical 
faculty, and caused the unholy trade of the ' resurrection men ' and the 
crimes of Burke and Hare. 

2 H.O. Papers, 52, 15. 



324 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

shadowed no rosewater revolution, if revolution should 
come. In November, at Preston — where the work- 
men complained that their employers treated them like 
* Turkish Bashaws,' too proud to give a civil answer, 
and not turning their heads to them when they spoke — • 
the distress was acute, and only the soldiers saved the 
town from the desperation of the people. At Black- 
burn and elsewhere in the north the working classes 
were exhorted by their speakers to arm and put down 
the House of Lords on their own behalf.^ 

It would be wrong to think of all England as united 
against the Lords ; for though nearly all England was 
against the Lords, it was not united. 

Great and evident as were the dangers impending 
over property and order, they had for once no effect in 
rallying the middle class to the conservative side. On 
the contrary, these dangers became the text of heated 
letters to Grey and his colleagues, abusing them for not 
taking a stronger line with the Lords. One captain of 
industry demands a creation of peers, to prevent * coal 
pits being set on fire and gas pipes cut.' Another 
exhorts the authorities to make peers and carry the Bill, 
or else the Political Unions will make a revolution and 
carry universal suffrage — a consummation by no means 
desired by the correspondent.^ 

More important and more threatening than the 
Bristol riots was the formation of the * Low Political 
Unions ' all over the north that winter. They differed 
from the Political Unions formed on the Birmingham 
model ; the latter, strong specially in the west and 
south-west,* contained both middle and lower classes, 
and were organised under middle-classes leadership, 
working in the first instance to keep the peace and to 
demonstrate for the Bill, and intending only in the last 

1 H.O. Papers, 52, 13. 
* Ibid., 49, 29. 

s E.g. the Frome and the Bath Unions did much to prevent the 
spread of the Bristol disease in that region {H.O. Papers, 40, 29). 



THE LOW POLITICAL UNIONS 325 

resort to fight for it. The * Low Political Unions,* 
on the other hand, were entirely composed of working 
men, desiring to combine and expecting soon to fight 
against the Lords for a programme undefined. They 
were called into being by the wave of indignation against 
the Lords for throwing out the Bill ; in some places, 
as Manchester, where class antagonism was very bitter, 
the two kinds of Political Union existed side by side, 
neither of them therefore strong like the Mother of 
Unions at Birmingham.^ 

In both kinds of Union, drilling and quasi-military 
organisations were not unusual ; and this tendency 
increased after the throwing out of the Bill. During 
October and November the idea of armed resistance 
became daily more familiar to the middle and lower 
classes.^ Arming of the Unions as such was rarely 
attempted, but members were encouraged to obtain 
arms as individuals, according to their right in common 
law, and gun-makers drove a flourishing trade. Now 
the drilling of men who had arms at home, and their 
avowed intention of carrying the Bill, or something 
stronger, by force if necessary, filled the King and the 
Tories with profound alarm and raised a most difficult 
problem for the Government. 

Grey had to solve the problem of the Political Unions 

1 H.O. Papers, 40, 29; 40, 30; 52, 15 ; 44, 25. I gather from 
the H.O. Papers that the Low Political Unions that winter did not 
often consist of more than 800 or 1000 members in places like Preston, 
Oldham, or Macclesfield. But these, if organised and accustomed to 
act together, could lead the rest of the workmen of the place in the day 
of crisis. 

* On November 4, no less respected a person than Carlyle's friend, 
Charles Buller, M.P., wrote to Colonel William Napier to ask him to 
' draw out a plan for the composition and officering of a national guard ; 
put your name to it, and let it appear in T/ie Times ; add a few of your 
stirring sentences to incite the British spirit of the cockney, and we shall 
have a national guard, and you at its head, in a fortnight.' The historian 
of the Peninsular War declined, in a very sensible letter, both for private 
reasons and on grounds of public policy (Brace's Life of Sir W. Napier, 
i. 362-5). 



326 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

or perish. If he gave them their head completely and 
allowed the drilling and military organisation to proceed 
unchecked, he would lose the King, who had taken alarm 
at statements made to him on the subject by the Duke of 
Wellington and others. Nor, indeed, were the King 
and the Duke wholly mistaken in their view ; for if the 
military organisation of the Unions went much further, 
Grey, with only a few thousand soldiers to back him, 
would find the arm of the law subjected in fact to the 
Political Unions, and the magistrates would everywhere 
be dependent on the goodwill of the Union leaders for 
the preservation of peace. If, on the other hand, he 
adopted the full programme of the King and the Duke, 
and attempted to put down the Political Unions alto- 
gether, as Pitt had put down the Corresponding Society 
and the Trade Unions of his day, the Ministry would 
fall, the Bill would disappear, and armed revolution or 
reaction would supervene. 

The strong middle course actually adopted saved 
the situation. On November 22, 1831, a Royal Pro- 
clamation was issued denouncing as illegal all Political 
Unions ' with various divisions and subdivisions, under 
leaders with a gradation of rank and authority, and 
distinguished by certain badges, assuming a power of 
acting independently of the civil magistrates.' * All 
such associations so constituted and appointed as afore- 
said to be unconstitutional and illegal.' 

At first, Wellington thought that the Proclamation 
was ' a real act,' that the Government had ' broken with 
the Radicals,' and that his own game was won. But in 
a few days he found out his mistake.^ The Unions all 
over the country, quietly eliminating the quasi-military 
part of their organisation, declared that they were not 
the illegal bodies referred to by the Proclamation. The 
ground had been prudently prepared beforehand with 
Attwood, to whom Althorp, with the cognisance of 

* Despatches, viii. 79, 85, 91, 93-4. 



A DANGEROUS CORNER TURNED 327 

Grey, sent down a personal message through the Birming- 
ham attorney, Joseph Parkes, explaining why Attwood 
must abandon the * drilled meeting ' of the Union 
appointed for November 22, and adjust his methods 
to the limits set by the Proclamation.^ 

The Proclamation was indeed a most successful act 
of statesmanship, and sensibly diminished the prospect 
of revolution or reaction. It was generally welcomed 
by the middle class, including many of the Unionists 
themselves, who recognised the growing danger of 
anarchy and rejoiced that the legal authority of a Liberal 
Government should be reaffirmed. The country had 
been drifting, and now a stand had been made.^ 

The strategic genius of Wellington clearly perceived 
that the relation of the Whig Government with the 
Political Unions was the key to the whole position. He 
saw that it governed, among other things, the negotia- 
tions of Grey with Lord Wharncliffe. These negotia- 
tions were, on the part of the Prime Minister, an attempt 
to persuade the ' waverers * among the Peers to support 
the new Bill, if it was drawn up on agreed lines. The Duke 
never took any part in these dealings. When the Procla- 
mation about Unions was first issued, on November 22, he 
thought that Grey was ' breaking with the Radicals ' and 
would therefore make real concessions to Wharncliffe. 
But when he found that the Proclamation had caused no 
such breach, he rightly deduced that Grey would make 
no concessions of any value to a Tory mind. Thence- 
forth he had only contempt for the proceedings of 
Wharncliffe and * these gentlemen who set about to break 
up the party.' ^ 

If once we grant the Duke's premiss that the people 
of England were not to count in the matter, he did 

1 Althorpy 368; Torrens' Melbourne, i. 386; Butler, 316, for 
Grey's cognisance of Parkes' mission. 

» There are letters to this eiFect in H.O. Papers, 40, 29. 
^ Despatches, viii. 79, 93-4, 101-3, 271. 



328 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

right to be angry with WharnclifFe for selling the pass. 
He was right in so far as Grey never once contemplated 
making the new Bill * less efficient ' than the old. The 
negotiations themselves, and the new features in the 
Bill that resulted from them, were only intended to save 
the face of those Peers and Bishops who would abandon 
further opposition. 

On December 1 1 one of the Tory negotiators had 
to confess to the Duke that * we found all parts of the 
Bill closed against any concession.' ^ But although 
the negotiations never resulted in a positive agreement 
between the parties, they were from Grey's point of 
view not unsuccessful, and Wellington attributed to 
them the passage of the Second Reading of the Bill in 
the Peers next April.^ 

* We had a dreadful scene [wrote Althorp, on December 6] 
at my Cabinet dinner yesterday. Durham made the most brutal 
attack on Lord Grey I ever heard in my life, and, I conclude, 
will instantly resign. He will put this upon alterations in the 
Bill, most unfairly, because there is no alteration of any con- 
sequence in the main principle. And I doubt whether he knows 
anything about the alterations, as he will not allow anyone to 
tell him what they are. But if he resigns on this ground it will 
break up the Government.' ^ 

Durham, since his boy's death, had not been able to 
follow public events with an attentive or a lucid mind. 

^ Despatches, v'm. 125. 

^ Despatches, viii. 271. The negotiations are fully recorded in 
William's Correspondence, end of vol. i. Mr. Wallas, in Place, 285, 
and Torrens, in Melbourne, i. 396, are mistaken in supposing that Grey 
ever once meditated ' remodelling the Bill ' in the sense of concession. 
The Bill was remodelled in the only sense that Grey ever intended, 
and many Reformers preferred it to the old Bill. Though Grey was 
at first averse to peer-making, he was at no time in favour of weakening 
the Bill. 

^ Althorp, 374-5, where the date of the letter is wrongly printed 
December 20, instead of December 6. The evidence of this unhappy 
scene rests not on Greville, who has popularised it, but who had it only 
at third hand, but on Althorp himself. 



NEGOTIATIONS AND A NEW BILL 329 

When this storm had passed, he seemed to have forgotten 
about it, and soon * returned as if nothing had happened.' 

The new Reform Bill was introduced into the House 
of Commons by Lord John Russell on December 12, 
1 83 1. The new features, suggested by the Wharn- 
cliffe negotiations, gave effect to many of the criticisms 
made by the Opposition on points of machinery and 
detail. The disfranchising Schedules A and B were 
drawn up no longer on the basis of population, but 
on the basis of the number of houses and the amount 
of assessed taxes ; and the new census of 1831 was 
employed. The Government also conceded the principle 
of the Gascoyne amendment that had been the immediate 
cause of the dissolution ; ^ the numbers of the House 
were not to be reduced, and it was therefore possible 
to take a dozen boroughs out of Schedule B while 
allotting an equal number more members to centres of 
population — as, for instance, to Rochdale, which the 
former Bills had not proposed to enfranchise. 

The new Bill was regarded by many advanced 
Reformers, including Cobbett and Hunt, as better than 
its predecessor ; while the Tories, from Peel down- 
wards, had the melancholy satisfaction of feeling that 
their opposition had been justified by the changes made. 
'In its details,' Croker wrote to Lord Hertford, * it is 
a great triumph for me and our party. But it leaves 
the great objection just where it was. Nay, by removing 
anomalies and injustice, it makes the Bill more palatable 
and therefore more dangerous.' ^ 

On December 17 the Second Reading was carried 
in the Commons by a majority of exactly two to one, 
indicating Tory abstentions. And then the House 
adjourned for Christmas. 

^ See p. 294, above. 

' Croker, ii. 141. Owing to the different system of calculation 
adopted under the new Bill, Calne, for which Macaulay sat, got into 
Schedule B — a personal triumph for Croker ! 



330 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

The new Bill had done well. Nothing had been 
lost by it in the country, and something had been gained 
by it in the Lords ; but not enough. The question of 
peer-making now took the field as the great controversy 
of the year 1832, henceforth overshadowing the dis- 
cussion of the Bill itself. 

In the previous autumn, when the cry for peer- 
making first grew loud. Grey was opposed to it for 
reasons of principle and for reasons of tactics. The 
reasons of principle, in the interest of the constitution, 
were his dislike of an act of violence, for which the twelve 
Tory peers created in 171 1 to carry the Treaty of 
Utrecht seemed to him a precedent at once unhappy and 
inexact. He thought the creation of fifty or more peers 
would * destroy ' the House of Lords as an independent 
and self-respecting body. He held also that it would 
gravely injure the Commons to take out of it so many 
of the best county members, * withdrawing from it so 
great a portion of the property of the country.' 

His tactical objections, in the interest of the Bill it- 
self, were two. First, that to create new peers avowedly 
to carry the Bill would cause some of its previous sup- 
porters and all the * waverers ' to vote against it in pro- 
test ; for this reason it was impossible to calculate how 
many new creations would be wanted — certainly well 
over fifty. Second, that the King, if he ever consented 
at all, would insist on calling up the heirs to existing 
peerages, many of whom were doing good work in the 
Lower House, sitting for county seats which their family 
influence had helped to gain. There would have to be 
a great number of bye-elections under disadvantageous 
conditions, and the Whigs had recently lost two bye- 
elections, for Dorset and Cambridgeshire.^ 

These arguments against peer-making would doubt- 
less have continued to weigh with Grey, if the passage 

1 See Appendix H, below, ' Peer-making,* letters of Oct. and Nov. 
1831. 



GREY CONVERTED TO PEER-MAKING 331 

of the Bill could have been secured by any other means. 
But when he found that his negotiations with Eord 
Wharncliffe, and his personal interviews with the leading 
Bishops,^ though not entirely unsuccessful, gave little 
assurance of the passage of the Bill intact through 
Committee, he began to envisage peer-making as a last 
resource. Graham, Brougham, Durham, and Holland 
were those who pressed him hardest on the point in a 
series of admirably argued letters, and after Christmas 
the adhesion of the Prime Minister to their doctrine 
gave them the command of the divided Cabinet. 

On New Year's Day, 1832, Grey wrote to Holland 
and to Brougham,^ confessing that he had * come nearer * 
to Brougham's * view of the matter of the Peerage ' than 
he thought he ever could have done, stating that he 
accepted Brougham's proposal of ' twelve at once * in 
earnest of more to follow if required ; but adding that 
* the King would dislike the thing in the greatest degree,' 
that four of their colleagues in the Cabinet were certainly 
against creation, and that the resignation of either 
Lansdowne or Palmerston would be ' fatal.' 

When the Cabinet met next day, Althorp expected 
that several Ministers would resign at the end of it. 
In discussing the proposal for the immediate creation 
of a dozen peers, Melbourne, Richmond, Palmerston, 
and Lansdowne were against, and Stanley * somewhat 
averse ' ; ^ while the rest of the Cabinet were for — 
Grant very doubtfully. Grey went to Brighton on the 
following day (January 3), to urge the policy of the 
majority of the Cabinet on the King, but not with 
the threat of immediate resignation if his request was 
denied. 

The policy of creating twelve peers as earnest of 
the King's future intentions was a half measure, open to 
all the objections which Grey had felt as to the probable 

^ Wiliiam's Correspondence, i. 443-4. 

* Brougham, iii. 151-66, and Appendix H, below, p. 386. 

* Parker's Graham, i. 134; Brougham, iii. 455. 



332 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

bad effect of creations on the waverers. The King 
very sensibly said that he would rather create twenty- 
one peers at once than run the risk of requiring a 
* second edition.* But Grey would give no assurance 
that even twenty-one would suffice in the end. After 
more than a week's negotiations between King and 
Cabinet, William on January 15, 1832, wrote Grey his 
famous promise in the following words : 

The King will noty after having allowed that the resource 
should be effectual, and having, indeed, insisted upon the 
absurdity of incurring any risk by an insufficient addition to the 
House of Lords, if resorted to at all, deny to his Ministers the 
power of acting at once up to the full exigency of the case ; it being 
understood that the contemplated addition shall be deferred till 
it may appear certain that, without such addition, the strength 
of the Government would be insufficient to bring the measure 
of Parliamentary Reform to a successful issue. 

No limitation of numbers was set. The only 
reservations were : 

That the creations of new Peers shall under no circumstances 
exceed three. That the other additions shall be made by calling 
up eldest sons, or collateral heirs of Peerages where no direct 
heirs are likely to succeed, without reference to the objection 
that has been made, of throwing open the representation of 
counties or boroughs. If these sources should prove insufficient, 
recourse may be had to the Scotch and Irish Peerage for pro- 
motion to the English Peerage on this occasion. 

If, therefore, the King had not in May gone back 
on his written promise of January 15, there would 
have been no national crisis ; and when Peel said to 
Croker on May 14, that the King's case for then 
refusing to make peers was * a bad one,' he was doing 
no injustice to his sovereign.^ 

The letter of January 15 was Grey's most remark- 
able success in purely personal dealings. His handling 

* Croker, ii. 165. 



GREY GETS THE KING'S PROMISE 333 

of the King was extraordinary, and knowing what we 
do of William's opinions and entourage, we must wonder 
more at his promise in January than at his attempt to 
avoid fulfilling it in May. The long conservative 
hesitations felt by the Prime Minister himself before 
making the demand, probably helped to obtain its 
concession, since the King by January felt assured that 
Grey was speaking from his heart when he declared that 
he considered peer-making ' a great evil which nothing 
would have induced him to think of resorting to, except 
the danger, or rather the certainty, of incurring one 
infinitely greater.'^ 

In March 1832, when the new Bill had nearly 
finished its smooth course through Committee in the 
Commons, the question of its probable fate in the Lords 
became too much for the nerves of some of Grey's col- 
leagues. He himself was fairly confident, on account 
of his personal relations with the waverers, that, if 
nothing rash was done, it would pass its Second Read- 
ing.2 But his confidence was not shared by the rest of 
the Cabinet. Holland's calculations foretold a draw ! 
Even Althorp, * that most honest, frank, true and stout- 
hearted of God's creatures,' was so overworked with 
conducting the Bill through the Commons, and so over- 
wrought with anxiety for it in the Lords, that he removed 
the pistols from his bedroom ; on March 3 he said 
to Hobhouse : * I do not know whether I ought 
not to make matters easier by shooting myself.' ' For 
God's sake, shoot anybody else you like,' was the 
answer. 

Finally, the leading members of the Cabinet — 
Brougham, Durham, Holland, Althorp, Graham, and 

1 William's Correspondence, ii. 69, Holland writes to Grey, when 
the latter goes to ask for the peers : ' I think you will and must succeed. 
The King knows your own reluctance to the measure so well that he 
must infer from your urging it, your deep sense of its absolute necessity.' 

* Creevey, ii. 242-3. 



334 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Russell — combined to coerce Grey into demanding an 
immediate creation of peers, rather than take the chance 
of defeat on the Second Reading. Their resignations, 
particularly Al thorp's, were threatened in case their 
chief refused. 

It was now that Grey's character was put to its 
supreme test. If he had been a weak man and * easily 
led,' as he was sometimes represented by those who 
only half knew him, he must have yielded against his 
better judgment to this combination. But he saw 
clearly that his colleagues were trying to force him to 
bring about a premature crisis, which would render 
both King and Lords unmanageable, and would not 
justify itself to moderate people in the country. 

Since January 15 the King stood pledged to make 
an unlimited number of peers, but only if the creation 
was deferred till its need was ' certain.' ^ William 
eventually went back even on that promise ; how much 
more would he have refused to be better than his word 
and to create fifty, sixty, or seventy peers on a mere 
speculation that the Bill would not pass ! If, on such 
a refusal, the Ministers resigned, many people would 
think they had acted factiously and in panic. On the 
other hand, if the King by any chance consented to create 
at once, a great many of the moderate peers, outraged at 
an action which they had been prepared to avert by voting 
for the Bill, would turn against the Ministers with fury 
and very probably throw out the Bill in spite of the new 
creations. In that case the Ministers would have played 
their trump card prematurely and would have lost after 
all. Grey preferred to trust to the Second Reading 
being passed, when he could face the Committee stage 
with the King's promise to create still in his pocket, to be 
produced, if necessary, as the ultima ratio. 

Grey's reasoning of the subject, set out in an admir- 
able letter to Althorp,^ ended with a firm declaration 

1 See p. 332, above. 

2 Printed in Althorp^ 407-13, as well as in William'' s Correspondence, 



*UNUS QUI NOBIS—' 23S 

that he could not do as he was asked, and that if Althorp 
resigned he could not carry on the Government. The 
letter was read to the Cabinet on March ii, 1832, and 
such was the force of its arguments in favour of abiding 
by the existing arrangement with the King and delaying 
the creation of peers till a defeat was certain or had taken 
place, that when a division was called for Grey carried 
with him the whole Cabinet except Durham. Durham 
burst away, declaring that he resigned. But he too, 
when he found that his resignation would involve 
Russell's and would break up the Ministry, allowed 
himself to be over-persuaded by Althorp. 

Grey, the * pessimist ' of the Napoleonic Wars, the 
valetudinarian of the long years of opposition conducted 
from Howick, had become in the hour of supreme 
domestic danger a pillar of strength among his colleagues. 
His victory in the Cabinet of March 1 1 was a victory 
of character. 1 

Yet he had now put heavy personal stakes on the 
Bill passing its Second Reading without catastrophe, and 
when in April the great debate in the Lords began, his 
family, if not himself, felt a terrible anxiety about the 
division. Lady Grey writes to her daughter in the 
spirit of Shakespeare's Portia when her Brutus had gone 
to the Senate : 

Monday^ April 9. — Car really seems less alarmed than any- 
body I see, and his apparent confidence keeps up my spirits 
though I am very nervous indeed. They do not expect the 
division till Wednesday. 

Tuesday nighty or rather Wednesday mornings I o'clock. — 
Car is not yet home and I am in a state of extreme nervousness. 

1 The authorities for the story of the Cabinet crisis of March are 
William's Correspondence, \i. 195-6, note, 257-72; Althorp, 402-14; 
Edinburgh Review, July 1871, 291-4; Hobhouse, iv. 180, 188-200; 
Butler, 347-9; Parker's Graham, i. 137-41 ; MS. letter of Durham 
to Grey, March 12, of which the last paragraph is quoted in Reid's 
Durham, i. 278. 



336 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

When he went to the House he thought the division would 
take place to-night, but as Henry left Lord WharnclifFe speaking 
at 12, they think it will probably be adjourned. I had much 
rather they would get through it to-night. They all went to 
the House in spirits, making sure of carrying the 2nd reading, 
tho' by a small majority, but Mr. Wood who came to tea 
has rather damped my hopes by telling me there is a report of 
two defections. Lord de Roos and Lord Ravensworth. 

Wednesday. — Car came home before 2 this morning, and 
though very tired, he seemed in good spirits, and he had rather 
more sleep than usual. Lord de Roos is still with us ; there 
is doubt of Lord Ravensworth.^ However, Car thinks the 
division safe. God grant it. 

It was already broad daylight on Saturday, April 14, 
1832, before the House divided. Grey's speeches had 
been conciliatory as well as eloquent, and this was believed 
to have affected several waverers.^ He lost no favour with 
the Peers either temporal or spiritual by a skirmish at 
close quarters with Phillpotts, the powerful and truculent 
Bishop of Exeter, to whose invective he replied with 
warmth that ' the pulses of ambition may beat as strongly 
under sleeves of lawn as under an ordinary habit.* ^ 
The Bishops voted fifteen against and twelve for the Bill 
— 2i great improvement on their record of twenty-one to 
two in the previous October. Wharncliffe both spoke 
and voted for the Second Reading, which was carried by 
184 to 175, the majority of nine which Charles Wood 
had prophesied to his father-in-law.* 

1 They both voted straight. " Althorp, 417-18. 

3 Greville, the moderate, describing this episode, wrote of Phill- 
potts : ' He is carried away by his ambition and alarm, and horrifies 
his brethren, who feel all the danger in these times of such a colleague.' 
' He has a desperate and dreadful countenance, and looks like the man 
he is.' Greville compared him to Queen Mary's Gardiner !' 

* Althorp, 418, note. 



CHAPTER V 

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE BILL THE ' DAYS OF MAY ' 

' Rise like lions after slumber 
In unvanquishable number ! 
Shake your chains to earth, like dew 
Which in sleep had faU'n on you : 
Ye are many — they are few.' 

Shelley. 
Quoted by Dr. Kay at a meetmg in Rochdale during the * Days of May.' 

The passage of the Second Reading of the Bill in the 
Lords on April 14, 1832, greatly relieved the situa- 
tion. If hostile amendments were now carried, they 
could quickly be reversed as the outcome of a peer- 
making crisis, whereas if the whole Bill had been again 
thrown out, the insult of such an act, combined with 
the prospect of the long delay before yet another Bill 
could have been brought through all its stages, might 
well have been too much for the patience of the people, 
if the King had hesitated a day in the creation of 
peers. Perhaps therefore the greatest danger was passed 
on April 14. But the most exciting and memorable 
popular crisis still lay ahead. 

The ' Days of May ' were brought about by an 
attempt, not indeed to destroy the Bill or even perhaps 
seriously to cut down its provisions, but to reassert the 
power and prestige of the House of Lords by taking 
the conduct of the Bill out of the hands of the Ministers 
and handing it over to the leaders of opposition. One 
of the motives was a very natural desire to heal the breach 

337 z 



338 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

in the Tory ranks, caused by the division of April 14, 
when Wharncliffe and his friends, to save the State, had 
voted against the party to whose fold they longed to 
return. But whatever the motives the experiment was 
ill-timed. If tried at all, it should have been in the pre- 
vious October, when the Bill first came up to the Lords. 
Neither the Ministers, the Commons, nor the people 
were any longer in the mood for such trifling, after 
all that had come and gone. 

On May 7 Lord Lyndhurst moved in Committee 
to postpone the consideration of the disfranchising 
clauses of the Bill till after the enfranchising clauses had 
been taken. ^ Grey, who had already told Wharncliffe 
in private that the Government could not agree to this 
procedure,^ now publicly warned the House that if the 
amendment was carried he would have ' to consider what 
course he should take.' But they would not listen. 
Waverers and Wellington men trooped off together to 
the division, and carried by thirty-five the postponement 
of Schedules A and B. 

Grey at once saw that his opponents had played into 
his hands. The real danger, he had long ago foretold, 
would arise if they pruned down the measure, here a 
little and there a little, on points each too small to seem 
a proper case for peer-making, yet collectively injurious 
to the popular character of the Bill. But now they had 
defied the Government on a main principle of pro- 
cedure and he was quick to take advantage of it.^ As 

1 Lyndhurst's speech implied that the Peers intended to cut down I ! 
the number of towns to be enfranchised, and then correspondingly reduce 
the number of boroughs in Schedules A and B. On the other hand, 
Ellenborough's speech, made immediately after the division, implies 
that the Bill would be swallowed wholesale as to disfranchisement, and 
be made, if anything, more democratic as to franchise qualification ! The 
fact was that the Lords who voted for the amendment had very divergent 
ideas as to what they would make of the Bill when they had taken it 
out of Grey's hands. * Greville, May 12, 1832. 

' On June 2, after the crisis, Creevey writes : ' In the House of 
Lords yesterday. Grey, according to his custom, came and talked to me. 



THE DAYS OF MAY 339 

soon as the House rose, the Cabinet chiefs, without 
leaving Westminster, met hastily in the Lord Chan- 
cellor's room, and decided to resign if the King would 
not give them power to make peers at once. The full 
Cabinet next morning confirmed this decision, Richmond 
alone dissenting. Even Palmerston smelt battle and 
forgot his doubts about the Bill. 

That afternoon (May 8), Grey and Brougham 
posted down to Windsor and saw the King. They 
asked for not less than fifty peers. He replied that he 
would send them an answer next day, but they had no 
doubt from his manner that it would contain a refusal. 
They started back to London at once, dining on the 
way at a public-house at Hounslow on mutton chops ; 
Brougham's universal appetite added kidneys, but Grey 
declared that ' he cared not for kidneys.' The meal took 
hold of the popular imagination, and was immortalised 
by Doyle in one of the most famous of his ' H.B.' 
cartoons.^ 

Next day (May 9) arrived the King's letter. 
Declining to make ' so large an addition to the Peer- 
age,' he accepted their resignations, but asked them to 
' continue in discharge of their official functions ' until 
the new Ministry was formed. 

It is important to remember that throughout the 
ten *Days of May,' the Whig Ministers were in charge 

It is really too much to see his happiness at its being all over and well 
over. He dwells upon the marvellous luck of Wellington's false move — 
upon the eternal difficulties he (Grey) would have been involved in had 
the Opposition not brought it to a crisis when they did. Their blunder 
he conceives to have been their belief that he would not resign upon his 
defeat on an apparent question of form. Thank God ! They did not 
know their man.' 

1 John Doyle, the father of ' Dicky Doyle,' and father also of a less 
savage style of political cartoon than that of Gillray or Cruikshank. For 
the mutton chops at Hounslow see Creevey, May 9, and Brougham, iii. 
193. Brougham's posthumous account of the interview with the King 
is incredible, as regards Grey's alleged self-effacement before his Chan- 
cellor, and is generally rejected. 



340 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

of the ordinary running of the administration, though 
they were in no position to make decisions of policy. 
None of them was for an hour superseded by a Tory. 
The anomalous state of affairs is indicated by a letter 
which Grey wrote from Downing Street on May 14 
to inform Lord Hill, commanding the troops in 
England, that two privates from the barracks at Bir- 
mingham had joined Attwood's Political Union, and 
had stated that ' the greater part of their comrades are 
prepared to follow their example.' ' I am no longer 
in a situation,' adds the fallen Prime Minister, ' to 
offer any advice, but I cannot help suggesting that the 
most expedient course would be to remove the regiment 
immediately from Birmingham to some other quarter, 
without attracting publick notice to the cause of it at 
present.' Thus, if the Revolution had broken out that 
week, there would have been no really responsible 
Ministers to suppress it or to negotiate with its 
chiefs. 

But in fact the Revolution was timed for the 
moment of Wellington's taking office, and not before. 
To some extent, though by no means entirely, the ' Days 
of May ' were due to a misunderstanding. The King's 
intention was to get the Bill passed unaltered, but, in 
order to avoid peer-making, to have it passed by the 
Tories.^ The people thought that the Bill as well as 
the Ministry was in danger. William commissioned 
Lyndhurst to take soundings, and then asked Welling- 
ton to form a Government and pass the Bill. The 
Duke thought it his duty to help his sovereign ' to 
shake off the trammels of a tyrannical Minister * at 
any expense to his own consistency in the matter of 
Reform.^ By some queer subtlety in his usually 



1 It appears that William tried first of all to persuade Brougham 
to keep ofBce and help pass the BiU — at least Brougham said so at the 
time {A I thorp, 423, note), and not merely years afterwards {Brougham, 
iii. 194-5). ^ Despatches, viii. 304. 



THE DAYS OF MAY 341 

straightforward mind, he thought that the Lords would 
be degraded by passing the Bill under threat of peer- 
making, if the Bill was presented to them by Lord 
Grey, but not if it was presented to them by himself — 
although in either case the threat of peer-making would 
be the compelling force. The point was too subtle for 
Peel, who refused to take office to pass the Bill, and 
thereby made the task of Cabinet-making difficult from 
the start.^ 

A point that was too subtle for Peel was very much 
too subtle for the mass of Englishmen. All they 
knew was that the King had refused to make peers, 
that Grey had therefore resigned, and that the King 
had sent for Wellington — the man who had stood 
almost alone in pronouncing against any Reform at 
all, the soldier who was reported to have said that if 
the people of England were not quiet, * there was a 
way to make them.' Those words, everywhere repeated, 
were taken up as a challenge. They would show the 
Duke that English citizens could stand up to the 
soldiers as well as Frenchmen or Belgians. The middle 
and working classes were for once united, in the 
resolve to make forcible resistance to the formation of 
a Wellington Ministry. 

The House of Commons gradually came to believe 
the amazing truth that the Tories were themselves 
going to pass * the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing 
but the Bill.' ^ But the people never believed it, and 
if they had it would have made no difference, they were 
so angry. * Every man you met,' said Cobbett, * seemed 

^ In defence of Peel's distinction between the case of 1832 and the 
cases of 1829 and 1846, it must be remembered that in 1832 the Whigs 
could and would pass the necessary measure if the Tories declined to 
take office; whereas in 1829 they could not have passed Catholic 
Emancipation, and in 1846 they refused to take office to pass the Com 
Law, and ' handed back the poisoned challice to Sir Robert.' 

^ They believed it during the decisive debate of May 14, but had 
not yet come to believe it fully in the debates of May 9 and 10. 



342 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

to be convulsed with rage.' When, on May 13, 
Attwood was informed of the Duke's good intentions 
as a Reformer, he replied that, whatever sort of Bill 
the Tories passed, if the House of Lords could, even 
at the climax of this great popular movement, make 
and unmake Ministries at will, * there was an end of 
popular power in England, and the spirit of the people 
would be utterly broken.' ^ 

Attwood was right in thinking that the coming era 
would be profoundly affected by the example of Wel- 
lington's success or failure. The defeat, upon this 
issue, of the King and Lords by the Commons and the 
people was the source from which sprang the peaceful 
democratic development of the Victorian Age. The 
' Days of May ' half won beforehand the battle for the 
Repeal of the Corn Laws, and for the working-class 
franchise of 1867. 

But Grey, the man of an earlier generation, more 
concerned with winding up the terrible arrears of the 
age gone by than in foreseeing the distant future, would 
have been content to have the unaltered Bill passed by the 
Tories. He and Althorp indulged their too domestic 
natures in the happy prospect of shuffling off the cares 
of State. Althorp, ' with bright eye and radiant smile,* 
went off to oil the locks of his beloved fowling-pieces, 
which had been rusting for eighteen months. And Grey 
wrote to Holland on May 1 3 : 

Can a new administration be formed ? I begin to be afraid 
that the attempt will fail. 

And two days later, when Holland had rebuked his 
want of spirit, replied : 

I believe all you say is quite right ; the truth is that never 
was captive more desirous of escaping from prison than I am 
from my present situation. But I will do my duty.^ 

1 Wakefield's Life of Attwood. 

^ For more of Grey's correspondence during the 'Days of May/ see 
Appendix H, below. 



THE DAYS OF MAY 343 

The attempt to form a Tory Ministry was frus- 
trated by the House of Commons. The Whig Minis- 
ters had tried to render the work of the Cabinet-makers 
easy, on condition that * the Bill * was passed. But the 
Commons would have none of it. It is true that 
Althorp and Stanley persuaded a meeting of the Whig 
party at Brooks's, on May 13, to allow the new 
Ministry to come in, to pass the Reform Bill, per- 
haps with democratic additions, and then to turn out 
the Duke.^ But in the Commons next evening all 
manoeuvres and subtleties were swept away by a 
wave of angry distrust, felt by Whig and Tory alike, 
at the prospect of anti-Reformers passing the Reform 
Bill as the price of office. When from both sides of 
the House one private member after another rose to 
express the abhorrence felt by any plain man at this 
ridiculous, dangerous, and dishonourable shift, the 
other Tory chiefs saw that Peel was in the right. 
Baring was to have had a leading place in the new 
Ministry. * I had rather,' he said, after that debate, 
* face a thousand devils than such a House of 
Commons.' ^ 

Hearing that the Lower House was unmanageable, 
Wellington next day (May 15) abandoned the attempt 
to form a Cabinet, and Grey was again sent for. The 
Commons, by preventing the formation of a Tory 
Ministry, had averted an organised insurrection in the 
great cities of England and Scotland, though if we 
are to judge by the debates very few members were 
aware of it. Still less did the Whig and Tory magnates, 
with whom lay the decision of the Cabinet crisis, discuss 
their conduct in relation to the impending insurrection. 
Yet few contingent historical propositions are more 

1 Campbell, ii. lo; Parker's Graham, i. 143; Althorp, 429. The 
Duke, of course, could have passed no Reform Bill not approved by the 
Whig House of Commons. 

^ Greville, May 17. The abortive Cabinet-making is most fully 
described in Croker. 



344 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

certain than this, that if the Duke had taken office there 
would have been a rebellion. 

The disturbances of the winter had died away at 
the beginning of the year 1832, though cholera and 
bad trade continued. But with the return of order 
came an increasing determination to fight, if necessary, 
for the Bill. The Proclamation of November 22 ^ had 
checked the militarisation of the Unions, but had not 
disarmed them. Those of them that looked to Attwood 
for orders had indeed kept within the letter of the law, 
but the law could not prevent their individual members 
from purchasing arms. And the ' Low Political 
Unions ' of the northern working men sometimes 
transgressed the proclamation. There was drilling at 
Manchester in January.^ In Lancashire and Yorkshire 
a vigorous trade went on with working-class customers 
for swords at twelve shillings each, and then by com- 
petition at six shillings. At Halifax the Political 
Union obtained 400 pistols from a Birmingham firm.^ 
In Scotland, Jeffrey had written to Grey, in January, 
that order was perfect, largely owing to the Unions ; 
that there were * no burnings, no turbulent assem- 
blies,' but that * the passion for Reform was more 
universal than ever,' and that if it was not obtained 
peaceably, ' the rising would not be confined to the 
lower orders,' but that * persons of good estate and 
character ' would cast in their lot with the rebels. 

Such was the state of things in the island when, 
in the second week of May, the news spread that 
Wellington was forming a Ministry. The immediate 
effect was not rioting, as when the Lords threw out the 
Bill in October, but a general suspension of work and 
business in the big towns. Men of all classes stood 

^ See p, 326, above. 

' H.O. Papers, 40, 30 : General Bouverie's letters of January 
25 and 29. 

^ H.O. Papers, 40, 30 : Eastham's evidence in Col. Shaw's report. 



THE DAYS OF MAY 345 

about in groups to listen for the news, and to await 
the coming crisis. In Scotland, wrote Cockburn, ' the 
fearful part of it ' was * the absence of riot.' In England 
Sir Robert Heron observed * no breaking of windows, 
no trifling expressions of discontent : all seemed reserved 
for a tremendous explosion.' In the whole of York- 
shire and Lancashire, in the ' Days of May,' there was 
only one riot — in York.^ But one of the members for 
Yorkshire had a letter from some of his leading con- 
stituents to say that they were * tired of signing petitions, 
and wished to fight it out, and the sooner the better.* ^ 
Pikes were hammered in Sheffield without concealment. 
Employers and workmen prepared to act together 
even in Manchester, where business was suspended. 
Everywhere that week the Political Unions were 
swelled by crowds of new members, prepared to 
obey any commands, lawful or unlawful, that they 
might receive from their chiefs. If the authority 
of the Government became paralysed or hostile, here 
would be the new bulwark against anarchy. The 
English genius for improvisation, for ordered liberty, 
and for self-help in a crisis had found expression in 
Attwood's Political Unions. 

In many places the Yeomanry refused to serve 
under Tory officers. Even in an old-world county like 
Bucks, * the respectable classes came to the resolution 
of not acting as special constables.' ^ The regiments 
of the gallant little army that had rushed about from 
place to place, putting down so many local riots, would 
be alike unwilling and unable to suppress the organised 
and simultaneous revolt of the principal towns of the 
country. 

Birmingham, during the *Days of May,' passed 
morally under the obedience of Attwood's Union. 

1 H.O. Papers, 40, 30: General Bouverie's letter of May 21. 
* Althorp, 433. 
» Ibid., 433. 



346 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Its ranks were being swelled by soldiers from the 
barracks, by Quakers, by Roman Catholic priests, and 
by 500 conservative-minded citizens, who now joined 
in a body to avert a social revolution. The police 
reports for Birmingham, and indeed for the country 
generally, were no heavier in May than in other 
months.^ 

* If any accident,' it was said, * had made resistance 
begin anywhere, it would have run like an electric 
shock.' Such being the state of England and Scotland, 
what were the plans of the popular leaders ? Place 
and Attwood were in complete understanding and 
close correspondence with each other and with the 
Union chiefs in all the great cities of the island. Their 
plan was first to try and prevent the Duke from taking 
office. For this purpose they created a run on the 
banks, initiated by Place's famous placard, ' To stop 
the Duke, go for Gold 1 ' The refusal of taxes also 
began, and was to continue until Grey was again in 
the saddle. 

But if, in spite of all, the Duke came into office, 
then, and only then, resort was to be made to the system 
of * hostile defence,' as Place termed it. London's part 
in it would be not to make the revolution, but to demon- 
strate in such a way that none of the 7000 troops in 
and around the capital could be moved to the provinces. 
It was ca.lculated, too optimistically indeed, that then 
only 4000 troops would be left to coerce the rest of the 
island. As the City Fathers were at one with the mob 
and the Unions,^ there should have been no difficulty 

1 Wakefield's Life of Attwood. The only exception to the good 
order and union of classes and the interest in Reform, during the ' Days 
of May,' was on Tyneside, where an embittered industrial strife was 
going on between the Reformers themselves. The employers were engaged 
in breaking the Miners' Union. The Union men and their leader had 
demonstrated powerfully in favour of the Bill in 183 I. See Hammond, 
Skilled Labourer, chap, iii., pp. 35, 41. 

* On May 23 Attwood received the Freedom of the City of London. 



/ \ 




THE DAYS OF MAY 347 

about London fulfilling its part. Meanwhile, Birming- 
ham and the other great cities were to barricade 
themselves, to create where necessary new municipal 
authorities, to close all banks, and then to sit down 
in a state of armed defence against any action the 
Government might take. What would happen after 
that, time and the hour would determine. It was 
hoped that the Duke would resign.^ 

This programme was not a hole-and-corner con- 
spiracy of fools and fanatics. It was announced in its 
principles by the Times and other newspapers, who 
declared that the people would pay no taxes till Lord 
Grey came back, that the middle and working classes 
were united and prepared to fight if troops were sent 
against them ; but that till Wellington actually took 
office the word was * peace, order, and no taxes.' ^ 

It is most strange, that while men were crying from 
the house-tops that there would be armed resistance if 
the Duke came in, neither he, Peel, nor Croker, neither 
Grey, Holland, nor Althorp, discussed it in their letters 
and speeches as relevant to the question whether the 
Duke should take office. One cannot but suspect that 
it secretly influenced their minds, though they thought 
that * noblesse ' obliged them to avoid allusion to a 
subject so indecorous and unconstitutional. 

The news that Wellington had on May 15 aban- 
doned his attempt to form a Cabinet spread next day 
over the land, and for a few hours relaxed the tension. 
But presently it was discovered that all was still at 
issue. The King had not really yielded. He had only 
asked Lord Grey to continue in office and to pass the 
Bill ; but he still refused to make peers, trusting that 
Wellington would ease matters by withdrawing his 
opposition. The Duke, however, refused to do any- 

^ The most important passages from the Place Papers, B.M., relating 
to the conspiracy, are published in Mr. Wallas' Place. 
* Times, May 12-16, 1832. 



348 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

thing more than abstain from voting as an individual 
peer. Even now he would not, as a party leader, call 
off the opposition, because to do so would be to yield 
to the unconstitutional threat of peer-making ! 

On May 17 Grey came down to the House, expect- 
ing to hear the Duke deprecate further opposition, and 
prepared in return to announce the Ministerial crisis 
at an end. Instead of this, he heard himself fiercely 
assailed for his unconstitutional conduct by Lyndhurst 
and Wellington themselves. Taken unawares, he had 
no declaration of policy to make. The crisis remained 
as acute as before. 

The rage of the people rose high at this fresh dis- 
appointment. May 18 was the day when the prepara- 
tions for revolt were most complete, and the passion 
that inspired them nearest to breaking-point. Place 
sent a precis of the conspirators' intentions to his friend 
Hobhouse, the Minister-at-War, for the instruction of 
his colleagues. It was now a question of hours. The 
Cabinet met in Downing Street at noon, and decided 
to ask for ' full and indisputable security * for the 
passage of the Bill. Grey and Brougham took the 
Cabinet minute across to the King at St. James's Palace. 
He was in great distress, and most unwilling to comply. 
The afternoon wore on, and the capital and the country 
hung on the issue of that prolonged interview. At 
length William gave way, and wrote the famous words : 

His Majesty authorises Earl Grey, if any obstacle should 
arise during the further progress of the Bill, to submit to him 
a creation of Peers to such extent as shall be necessary to enable 
him to carry the Bill. 

The battle was won. The country instantly sank 
to rest with a sigh of profound relief. When the King 
pressed for a forcible dissolution of the Political Unions, 
Grey refused with unusual emphasis, adding with truth 
that they would dissolve of themselves if nothing foolish 
was done. He had learnt, during the last months of 




Althorp, Russell. 



BURDETT, HOBHOUSE, STANLEY, GrAHAM. 

(in top boots) 



In front of the throne are the Commissioners with Lord Brougham presiding as Chancellor, 
The Duke of Sussex is the stout figure by the curtain on the right. The benches of 
the Tory Peers are vacant. The Commons are at the bar. 

The Reform Bill receiving the Royal Assent in the House of Lord 

From the engraving by Win. Walker and S. W. Reynolds, after the painting by 
Samuel W. Reynolds. 



THE REFORM BILL BECOMES LAW 349 

the struggle, how much the country owed to these 
Unions, of which he had at first been distrustfuL 
On May 19 he sent for Attwood, thanked him for his 
services, and asked if anything could be done for him 
by way of showing the gratitude of the Ministers. It 
equally well became Grey to offer and Attwood to refuse.^ 
The Tory lords, privately informed by Taylor of 
what the King had promised to do if they held out 
any longer, abandoned their opposition in Committee. 
On June 4 the Third Reading of the Bill was carried 
by 106 to 22. On June 7 the Reform Bill received 
the Royal Assent by Commission ; the scene was in 
the House of Lords ; the Tory benches were empty, 
and the six Commissioners were Grey, Holland, 
Brougham, Wellesley, Lansdowne, and Durham.^ 

1 Wakefield's Attwood, 214. 

^ In the picture opposite some details are very exact, e.g. the posi- 
tion of H.R.H. the Duke of Sussex by the curtain. But others are not 
accurate, as Hobhouse tells us that he really came too late to see the 
event. The Scottish and Irish Reform Bills were passed in the course 
of the summer. 



CHAPTER VI 

AFTER THE BILL- BELGIUM ESTABLISHED THE FIRST 

REFORMED PARLIAMENT TO THE RETIREMENT OF 
LORD GREY, JULY 1 8 34 

'The retirement of Lord Grey in 1834 proved the conclusion of 
a poHtical career which had extended over more than forty years. For 
nearly nine-tenths of the period, Grey had been in opposition to the 
Ministry, He had thus less opportunity of conferring beneiit upon his 
country than almost any of his predecessors. Yet perhaps Britain 
owes more to him than to any other Minister. . . . He had foreseen 
at thirty the necessity of the measure which he carried at seventy. Peel 
was as wise as Grey ; but Grey, unlike Peel, was as prescient as he was 
wise. Grey himself should be judged by the Reform Bill alone. . . . 
He seemed to be raised up to carry Reform. The passage of the 
Reform Bill made his own tenure of power an anachronism.' — Spencfr 
Walpole, History of England, chap. xiii. 

The Reform Bill laid it down that seats in the House 
of Commons could no longer be purchased or inherited 
as private property, but must represent the people. 
This principle being established once for all, the further 
definition of the classes who were to be regarded as 
constituting ' the people,' was sure to be made afresh 
with each changing generation. The battle for popular 
control of the House of Commons was won in 1832. 

The passage of the Reform Bill also decided, not in 
law but in fact, that the People, acting on and through 
the House of Commons, were the dominant power in 
the State. The Tory efforts at resistance in the House 
of Lords, aided in their last rally by the Crown, had only 
served to elicit the irresistible power of the popular will. 

350 



THE PEACEFUL REVOLUTION 351 

After 1832 the Government of Great Britain had become 
* representative,' whereas Pitt's Attorney-General in 
1794 had declared in Court that * representative govern- 
ment ' was * the direct contrary of the government which 
is established here.' ^ The change was so profound 
that in most countries it would only have been effected 
by civil war. Therein lies the measure of Lord Grey's 
achievement. 

The new principle was indeed a reassertion of the 
old popular elements in the English constitution of 
Stuart times. But it was a reassertion of rights which 
had long ago decayed, and which, now that they were 
revived, contained far greater power of democratic 
development than they could ever have had before the 
Industrial Revolution. It was from 1832 onwards 
that the whole spirit of our polity finally diverges from 
that of aristocratic Germany, just as in 1793 it had 
diverged from that of Jacobin France. We all rejoice 
at both divergences. But there was much greater 
danger under Pitt and Castlereagh of Britain becoming 
like aristocratic Germ.any, than there ever had been of 
her becoming like the France of Robespierre. 

"With the passage of the Reform Bill the new age 
had arrived, ' making Grey's continuance in power an 
anachronism.' But since the leaders of the new age, 
of whom Peel was one of the first, were not yet ready 
to step forward. Grey did well to preside for two more 
years over the divided counsels of the Whig Cabinet. 
This task he performed better than any other Minister 
could then have done. But the great legislative pro- 
gram.me of those two years — Slavery Abolition, Scottish 
Burgh Reform, the Factory Act, the India Bill, the new 
Poor Law — was not like the Reform Bill, Lord Grey's 
personal affair. The sphere in which his interest was 
deepest, and his guiding hand most felt, was Foreign 

1 State Trials, xxiv. pp. 294-5. 



352 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Policy. From 1 830 to 1 834 he helped Lord Palmerston 
to ward off a series of dangerous crises from Europe, 
and to settle for eighty years the question of Belgium, 
the spot in Europe which in all ages, from the days of 
Alva to our own, most nearly concerns the security of 
Britain. 

Belgium had yet to make good its recently asserted 
independence of Holland. The candidature of Louis 
Philippe's son, the Duke of Nemours, for the new throne 
of Belgium, had been set aside by the firmness of Grey 
and Palmerston in February 1831.^ A more acceptable 
king was found in Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, whom 
on June 4, 1831, the Belgian Congress elected by 
152 votes to 43. The election proved the happiest 
possible choice for Belgium and for Europe. Leopold 
had lived for a long time in England, on familiar terms 
with the leaders of the more Liberal school of English 
constitutionalism. He had been the husband of the 
lamented Princess Charlotte, once heiress to the British 
throne ; he was the uncle and adviser of the Princess 
Victoria, who had taken her place. One of his most 
intimate friends was Lord Durham. And throughout 
Lord Grey's Ministry, King Leopold kept up a close 
personal correspondence with the British Premier on 
every shifting phase of the prolonged Belgian crisis. 

Grey sent to Belgium Sir Robert Adair, his own and 
Fox's friend of thirty and forty years back. Adair 
further strengthened the close personal contact between 
Brussels and Downing Street. At the same time our 
able Ambassador at Paris, Lord Granville, the friend of 
Canning whom Grey had reappointed to his old post, 
kept him au fait wiXh the changes and chances of French 
politics, where a war-party was straining at the leash, and 
striving to revive the dangerous crusading zeal of the 
old Jacobin type.^ Grey was in complete agreement 

1 See pp. 259-260, above. 

2 Grey's correspondence with King Leopold, Sir Robert Adair, and 
Lord Granville are in the papers at Howick. 



WHIGS, TORIES, AND BELGIUM 2S3 

with Palmerston on Foreign Policy, and with the skilful 
help of Talleyrand in London ^ the two were able, not 
without difficulty, to preserve the Anglo-French entente, 
France and England continued to support King Leopold 
and Belgian independence, against the Dutch backed 
by the reactionary powers of Europe. 

In August and September 1831 the dangers caused 
by the entry first of Dutch and then of French troops 
into Belgium were skilfully averted without a quarrel 
with France.^ A year later (October-December 1832), 
Britain and France actually co-operated by sea and land 
to coerce the Dutch into the surrender of the Citadel of 
Antwerp. All these delicate operations v/ere carried 
out under the watchful and hostile eyes of the French 
war party on one side, and on the other of the English 
Tories and of the despotic Powers of the East. Russia, 
Austria, and Prussia, jealous of Belgian independence as 
a breach in the reactionary system of the Treaties of 
Vienna, only waited for a misunderstanding between 
France and England to pounce down on the small rebel 
Kingdom. 

At home and abroad it was generally expected that 
if the Tories returned to power, a breach between France 
and England would ensue. King William was hostile 
to the Whig policy of friendship with France. Lord 
Aberdeen, Wellington's Foreign Minister, made bitter 
attacks in the House of Lords, not only on the Belgian 
Revolution and the separation of Belgium from Holland,^ 
but on the person and character of the King of the French.* 
Grey's warm reply on behalf of Louis Philippe was 
greatly appreciated in the Tuileries, where the King 
' put his hand on his heart ' and told Lord Granville 
that Grey's words ' had made an impression that never 
could be effaced.* 

1 See p. 259, above. 

2 See p, 304, above. 

3 Hansard, ix. 841-5, Jan. 26, 1832. 
* Ibid., V. 798-9, August 5, 1831. 

2 A 



354 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Leopold knew that the Tories were the enemies 
of Belgian independence. He regarded a change of 
Government in London as certain to lead to a war between 
France and England, which his own little Kingdom could 
only hope to survive as a protectorate of France. He 
therefore made no secret of his Whig partisanship ; 
in March 1832 he even wrote to Lord Grey hinting 
strongly at the need for peer-making. During the ' Days 
of May ' he was in * deep despondency ' at the prospect 
of a Wellington Ministry, regarding war as certain, but 
determined, as Adair reported to Grey, ' to fight to the 
last for his new Kingdom.' In the end, the peace of 
Europe and the independence of Belgium were saved, 
though only by a combination of luck and skill. And 
when at length, in 1841, the Conservatives attained to 
real power again in this country, it was no longer the 
reactionary Toryism of Wellington, but the sage counsels 
of Peel that directed the policy of Aberdeen, who himself 
had been made wiser by the passage of years .^ 

In a letter to Grey of April 1832 King Leopold 
thus sums up the Belgian achievement of Grey and 
Palmerston : 

It has been the policy of Great Britain for centuries never 
to permit Belgium to fall into the hands of any great Power. 
Everything is now favourable to the policy. The Belgians are 
warmly attached to their newly-acquired independency. They 
hate the Dutch, and they are jealous of the French. The new 
kingdom is quieter and better settled than many old countries. 
An object, therefore, on which Great Britain lavished so much 
blood and money, has been attained without its costing a farthing 
to that country, or being the cause of the slightest hurt to any 
Englishman. 

It was a logical development of this Belgian policy 
of the Whigs, that eighty years later France and England 
should fight side by side to save Belgian independence 

1 Appendix H, below, p. 390; and p. 389, Lord Holland's letter 
of May 14 on Aberdeen. 



GREY AND RUSSIA 355 

from the despotisms of Central Europe, which even in 
1 83 1 had angrily menaced its birth. 

But in Lord Grey's time Russia was even more to 
the fore than Prussia in threatening the liberty of Belgium. 
Even in Metternich's Europe, the Czar Nicholas was 
the most despotic figure of all, suppressing the autonomy 
of the Kingdom of Poland, which he had pledged himself 
to respect and which the other powers had guaranteed 
by the Treaties of Vienna. Grey, who never allowed 
his friendship with the Princess Lieven to influence his 
policy in the slightest degree, was, much to the disgust 
of that clever lady, becoming more and more anti- 
Russian. On January i, 1832, he wrote to Brougham 
that the Russians were ' doing all they can to throw 
the whole Belgian affair into confusion. It is to be 
regretted that we had no power of sending a fleet into 
the Baltic last summer to settle the matter of Poland.' 

Russia's Polish and Belgian policy so deeply offended 
Grey's Liberal instincts, that we notice at this period, 
even as regards the Turkish question, a tendency away 
from the Russophil leanings which had been so marked 
in him during the struggle for Greek independence.^ 
In the following letter of Grey's to Lord Holland 
(January 25, 1833) we see him take one step away 
from pure Foxite tradition on Russia and Turkey, in 
the direction of that policy which Palmerston and Russell 
carried to much greater lengths in the Crimean war. 

I certainly have not much more fear than you have of an 
attack upon India, though this is not to be entirely put out of 
our view. But with the influence which Russia is likely to 
obtain in the new Government of Greece — with that which 
events seem likely to give her in Turkey, the danger of her 
power in that quarter of the world is not remote. The danger, 
I agree with you, will be best guarded against by a friendly 
union with France. But you are aware of the difficulties in high 

1 Pp. 227-8, above. 



356 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

quarters ^ increased by the [French] possession of Algiers, And 
if, joining with France to resist the advance of Russia into the 
Mediterranean, hostilities should follow, would either the Parlia- 
ment or the people support us in a war which would be generally 
felt to arise for the sake of a remote and problematical interest ? 

Another important foreign question of that period 
was the running sore of the Iberian peninsula, the con- 
stant civil wars of Liberal and Reactionary in Spain and 
Portugal. Here also the Whig and Tory policies were 
opposed. The Whigs were for supporting the Liberal 
cause in conjunction with France, while jealousy of 
Liberal France dominated the attitude of Wellington 
and Aberdeen. Grey regarded it as a British interest 
to protect Portugal from the disastrous rule of the cruel, 
reactionary usurper Dom Miguel. He was indeed 
under no deceptions as to Miguel's constitutionalist 
rival, Dom Pedro. In October 1833 he wrote to Lord 
Holland : 

I cannot believe that Pedro will ever do any good in Portugal 
or anywhere else. On the contrary, I am persuaded that if he 
remains, the affairs of that unhappy country will never be settled. 
His Government is that of a faction. 

This was very much the opinion of Captain Charles 
Napier, who in command of British seamen in Pedro's 
service had just destroyed Miguel's fleet. J>Jevertheless 
Miguel was much the worst of the two. In January 
1834 Grey resigned, because he could not persuade 
Althorp and the Cabinet to send an expedition to 
Portugal to give Dom Miguel the coup-de-grace. He 
was with difficulty persuaded by King William's remon- 
strances, and by an affectionate round-robin from the 
whole Cabinet, to resume the reins of power.^ All, 
however, worked out as well as he could have wished 

1 King William was becoming very jealous of France, and disliked 
his Ministers' foreign policy. 

" The full correspondence about this little-known incident is to be 
found in the papers at Ho wick. 



WHIG FAILURE IN IRELAND 357 

in Portugal. In the following May, Dom Miguel was 
finally overthrown by Palmerston's * Quadruple Alliance ' 
of England, France, Portugal, and Spain. And Dom 
Pedro crowned his services to humanity by dying in the 
hour of his triumph. 

The victorious Whigs, who were able at least to 
begin the process of amelioration in Great Britain, were 
helpless in front of the Irish question, which neither 
they nor any important section of the British public 
then understood at all. The terrorism and systematic 
murder in agrarian Ireland in 1832 required firm govern- 
ment, coupled with the programme of Disestablishment 
and Land Acts, which Gladstone introduced in an age 
too late. From Stanley, Ireland got a rigid Coercion 
Act, with court-martial justice, much disliked by Lord 
Althorp and the British Liberals. But no party in 
Great Britain contemplated disestablishing the alien 
Church or touching the relations of landlord and tenant, 
any more than they contemplated yielding to O'Connell's 
agitation for Repeal of the Union. 

Grey supported Stanley on coercion, and sympathised 
with his dislike of O'Connell. 

The best symptom I see [he wrote to Stanley, on Septem- 
ber 10, 1832J is the vulgar violence of O'Connell. The only 
man who could descend to such appeals to the worst feelings of the 
lowest of the People, must think that his cause is nearly desperate. 
I wish you could get hold of him. 

The Whig panacea for Ireland was Church Reform, 
in diminutive doses. In this direction Althorp and Lord 
John Russell were prepared to go further, and Stanley, 
Richmond, and Graham less far, than the rest of the 
Cabinet. The Prime Minister, who had never been a 
strong Churchman politically, had no personal objec- 
tion to sequestrating for secular purposes a little of the 
superfluous revenues of the Protestant Establishment 
in Ireland. But he was anxious to keep the Cabinet 



358 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

together, and he also believed that British opinion 
would be very jealous of anything savouring of a sacri- 
fice made to conciliate the Roman Church.^ 

And so, under a running fire of threats of resigna- 
tion from his colleagues on both sides. Grey steered on 
as best he could, until the General Election of December 
1832 yielded the enormous Whig majority of the first 
Reformed Parliament, and so gave a fresh lease of life 
and energy to the divided Cabinet. 

That Christmastide election was the moment in 
history when the Whig party entered into full possession 
of the promised land, after its forty years in the wilderness. 
A letter of Lady Grey to her daughter, Lady Caroline 
Barrington, gives a pleasing picture of the old Northum- 
brian home, on the day of Lord Howick's election at the 
Alnwick hustings, five miles away : 

I am very cross, as Car would not let me go to the election. 
I had set my heart on it, as I heard the Alnwick people would 
have taken it well, and still more because I wished to hear Henry 
speak. However, I really had no choice, for I never saw your 
Papa so obstinate, and perhaps he was right, and that I might 
have suffered from the cold. We are the only two left at home^ 
and I believe that there is scarcely a servant left in the house. 

As they two sat together in the silent rooms till the young 
people came home from the family triumph, they must 
have summoned up remembrance of many very different 
elections long ago, in the years of political darkness that 
had never obscured for them the light of happiness and love. 

1 On Oct. 29, 1832, he wrote to Lord Holland : ' We have been 
on the point of breaking-up on the Church question in Ireland. We 
overcame the desire expressed by Richmond and Stanley to have a declara- 
tion that we would not divert the Revenues of the Church to any but 
Church purposes, and I really believe that we may have the means of 
affecting a very large measure of Reform by giving a very liberal con- 
struction to the phrase " Church purposes," But if we attempt to carry 
our measures further we shall infallibly break up and throw the whole 
weight of the Church and all the Protestant feeling of the country into 
the arms of our enemies.' 

^ Lord Grey, as a peer, could not attend the election. 



SLAVERY ABOLISHED 359 

Shortly after the assembling of the first Reformed 
Parliament, Lord Grey was able to effect a long-needed 
change in the Cabinet. Stanley, hating the Irish and 
hated by them, and aware that his policy over there was 
too strong for many of his colleagues and for the House 
of Commons, had long been desirous of some other field 
for his splendid talents. The difficulty was that no 
other high Cabinet office was vacant. At length, in 
March 1833, Durham resigned. Physical pain and 
mental depression had never let go their grip on him 
after his boy's death, and since then two of his daughters 
by his first wife had followed their half-brother to the 
grave. Disliking Stanley's Irish coercion Bill, and out 
of touch either personally or politically with all his 
colleagues, he had long ceased to attend Cabinet Meet- 
ings, except on rare occasions. After several attempts 
to resign, he effected his purpose in March 1833. He 
retired with the earldom, on which he had laid such in- 
consequent stress in the middle of his far deeper private 
tragedies and far higher public aims. Whether in 
relation to his colleagues Durham had been more 
sinned against or sinning, he had suffered piteously at 
the hands of fate. 

Durham's departure placed the Privy Seal at Grey's 
disposition. After * a most painful scene ' the Prime 
Minister compelled the incompetent Lord Goderich to 
take it, and vacate the Colonial Office in favour of Stanley, 
who had four days before * positively refused to continue * 
as Irish Secretary.^ This excellent arrangement gave 
to Stanley's debating power and administrative energy 
the great task of freeing all the slaves in the British 
Empire, which Goderich, obeying his own indolence 
and the obstructionists in the Colonial Office, had per- 
sistently refused to set about. Lord Howick, as under- 
secretary for the Colonies, took a leading part in pressing 
on his father the urgency of Slavery Abolition ; and by 

1 Letters of Grey to Holland, March 24 and 29, 1833. 



36o LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

subsequently resigning office on the introduction of 
Stanley's Bill, he was instrumental in reducing the period 
of ' apprenticeship ' for the liberated slaves from twelve 
to seven years. 

The Whigs, and in particular the Grey family, hold 
a good record in relation to the unhappy negro race. 
In the one year of office and divided power that they 
enjoyed between 1782 and 1830, they abolished the 
Slave Trade in despite of George III. In the first year 
after they had secured their position by the Reform Bill, 
they abolished Slavery itself. 

Among the Government measures of 1833 was an 
India Bill of the first importance. The great company's 
monopoly of trading to India had been taken away in 
18 13, and the time had now come to put an end to its 
monopoly of the China trade. The East India Company 
was wound up as a commercial concern on fair terms to 
the shareholders. It became a Corporation charged 
with governing India under revised conditions. Among 
these conditions was a declaration that all offices were 
to be open to the natives, irrespective of race, religion, 
and colour. 

In the same year the governing bodies of the Scottish 
burghs were made elective. The entire absence of any 
representative principle in Scottish municipal life, deeply 
resented by a population long the best educated in Europe, 
and latterly aroused to a keen interest in political affairs, 
had been one of the worst scandals which the unreformed 
Parliament had refused to remedy. Jeffrey had declared 
it dangerous to delay this work of emancipation, even for 
another year. English municipal reform, which, badly 
as it was needed, could afford to wait a little longer, 
was passed in 1835, after Grey had retired to private 

Another sheaf in the harvest of Reform garnered 
in 1833 was the Factory Act of that year. Michael 
Sadler, the Parliamentary champion of the factory 
children, had, owing to his opposition to the Reform 



FACTORY ACT AND POOR LAW 361 

Bill, failed to obtain the seat he so well deserved in the 
new House. Lord Ashley (Shaftesbury) took up the 
cause in his place, and an almost revolutionary agitation 
in the industrial north made it necessary for the Govern- 
ment to do something. They did not adopt the ' Ten 
Hours ' programme for all workers, and their Bill was 
very inadequate. But it was a decided step forward in 
the direction of limiting the labour of children and 
young persons. Its chief merit was that it set up 
factory inspectors, in the first instance to the disgust of 
the working men, but, as it proved, to their immense 
benefit. 

A still larger but less entirely beneficial reform 
was the new Poor Law of 1834. The pauperisation 
of the English working class had long been fostered 
by indiscriminate outdoor relief. Rates in aid of wages 
kept wages down and sent the birthrate up. The self- 
respect, independence, and self-help of the ' labouring 
poor ' were systematically annihilated. The unemployed 
were enslaved and bound down to particular parishes, 
so that fluidity of labour was stopped, and emigration 
discouraged. Society was perishing of these diseases, 
and called for the knife. And the knife was what it 
got from the Whig Poor Law. The new * Union ' 
Work Plouses, wherein alone poor relief might in future 
be received by the able-bodied, were horrible to all 
classes of their inmates. And the sudden withdrawal 
of outdoor relief from the wage-earner, without any 
security for the immediate rise of wages, often caused 
the utmost misery during long years before wages 
actually rose. Families which had hitherto enjoyed an 
allowance for every child, were driven to send mother 
and children to field labour under the terrible conditions 
of the ' gang system.' ^ 

The new Poor Law and the work of the Commission 
on which it was based, imperfect and harsh as they seem 

1 Dunlop, The Farm Labourer, 191 3; Has bach, English Agri- 
cultural Labourer. 



362 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

by the more enlightened standards of our day, were the 
first big attempt to deal scientifically with the evils 
incident to the industrial revolution. They would 
have been more truly scientific if they had been more 
humane. But, taken with the Factory Act, they were 
at least a hopeful sign of a new era, when the * condition 
of the people question ' would receive the serious 
attention of a reformed Parliament.^ 

Before the Poor Law was through the Upper House, 
the end of Grey's Cabinet had come — on an Irish 
question, as was to be expected. In May 1834 Lord 
John Russell * upset the coach,' as Stanley wrote, by 
proclaiming from the ministerial bench that the * revenues 
of the Church of Ireland were larger than necessary for 
the religious and moral instruction of the persons belong- 
ing to that Church,* and that he would like to see part 
of its wealth appropriated for other purposes. The 
result of Russell's declaration was the resignation of 
Stanley, Graham, and Richmond, who joined Peel as 
leaders of the new Conservative party. It was an inevit- 
able and wholesome development of men and parties for 
the new era. 

But to Grey, who was of the old era, the blow seemed 
politically fatal. He was at the end of his tether. His 
constitution had enabled him to face the storms of the 
Reform Bill better than many of his colleagues, but when 
it was over the effort had left him an old man with broken 
health. In September 1832 he wrote from Howick : 
* I feel a great diminution of my strength, and I am unable 
to do many things which were a great occupation and 

1 The Howick Papers and the H.O. Papers show that the Govern- 
ment was all this time kept under heavy pressure from many quarters 
to legislate or act administratively against Trade Unions, then very 
unpopular and not thoroughly accepted as a normal institution. This 
course was often debated and always refused, except in the unhappy 
case of the 'Dorsetshire labourers,' whom Melbourne in 1834 trans- 
ported for no worse crime than attempting to form an agricultural 
labourers' union in which they had administered oaths. 



GREY'S LAST CABINET CRISIS 2^3 

amusement to me when I was last here.' In January 
1833 he wrote to Lady Durham : 'Young ambition 
never looked with the same eagerness to place and power, 
than I do to escape from the burden of both. I have not 
strength, either of body or mind, to bear it.' No wonder 
then that in May 1834 he was too old, physically and 
politically, to give the forward lead to the Liberal party 
suggested by the retirement of the more Conservative 
Ministers. 

Such was his state of mind when, two months after 
the departure of Stanley and Graham, an opportunity 
occurred for his own release, of which he eagerly availed 
himself. 

Stanley's Coercion Act was coming up again for 
renewal in Parliament. It was agreed to drop the 
court-martial clauses ; but about the public meeting 
clauses there were grave differences of opinion in the 
Cabinet. Littleton, the Irish Secretary, wrote to Lord 
Wellesley, now Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, asking him 
to advise the Prime Minister against their renewal. 
Wellesley, supposing that Grey and the Cabinet wanted 
to drop the clauses, and not having a strong opinion 
on the subject, did as Littleton asked in a letter to 
Lord Grey of June 21, though he had expressed the 
opposite view only ten days before. The Prime 
Minister was much discomposed at Wellesley's voUe 
face, but detected that his movement was not spon- 
taneous. Grey, therefore, stood out for the public 
meeting clauses, and overbore the more Liberal sec- 
tion of the Cabinet on the subject. But meanwhile 
Littleton, who thought he could ' manage Dan,' had 
told O'Connell privately that Wellesley, Althorp, and 
he himself were against the clauses. When, therefore, 
the clauses were after all retained, O'Connell thought 
he had been deceived, and told the House the gist of 
Littleton's ill-placed confidences. Peel took up the 
case, and a cry was raised in the Parliament for the 
production of Wellesley's letters. Althorp saw no 



364 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

creditable way out but to resign. On July 8, 1834, 
Lord Grey resigned with him, and the Government 
was at an end. 

It turned out, contrary to Grey's first expectations, 
that a Tory Cabinet was still impossible. Althorp was 
persuaded by the party, greatly against his will, to 
resume office. But Grey declined to return, while 
urging Althorp to go back. They all parted friends, 
and it was not Grey, but only his clientele who con- 
sidered that he had been ill-treated. He differed from 
the leading members of the Cabinet on the public 
meeting clauses, which they struck out after his 
departure ; he was intensely desirous to quit public 
life ; his health and strength were no longer adequate, 
and he had been aware of this for two years past, as 
his private letters show. Lord Grey's retirement was 
natural and right, and so was Althorp 's unwilling 
return to office at Grey's request.^ 

To his very old friend, Robert Adair, Grey would 
have told the whole truth. And to him he wrote, on 
July 15, 1834 : 

I hope that the same administration, in principle and policy, 
and with little change even in the persons composing it, will 
continue. It can hardly be necessary for me to add that this 
is with my entire concurrence and at my desire. In this close 
of my public life I have the comfort of retaining the confidence 
and good opinion of those friends, both political and personal, 
with whom I have been so long united. 

So fell Lord Grey, not like the smitten tree, but 
like the dated leaf. 

1 The fullest account of these transactions is in Le Marchant's 
Althorp. But some important letters will be found in Appendix J, * Lord 
Grey's Retirement,' pp. 391-2, below. They contain no further direct 
evidence as to Brougham's conduct, arraigned by Le Marchant. But they 
prove that Grey himself did not believe that either Brougham or any 
of his colleagues had intrigued to compass his resignation. 



EPILOGUE 

THE LAST YEARS 1 8 34 TO I 845 

' Let us all be not careful what men will make of these actings. 
They, will they, niU they, shall fulfill the good pleasure of God, and 
we shall serve our generations. Our rest we expect elsewhere : that 
will be durable.' — Oliver Cromwell. 

The first use that Lord Grey made of his recovered 
leisure was to go to Edinburgh, in September 1834, 
to receive the thanks of the Scottish nation. Scotland 
owed more even than England to Lord Grey. For the 
first time in her political and civic history she had been 
endowed with popular institutions. When the inner 
warmth of the Scottish nature rises to the top, it rises 
to some purpose, and seldom has any man been received 
as Grey was received in every town and village that he 
passed through on his Scottish tour. 

In the speeches at the famous banquet given to 
him at Edinburgh, Durham and Brougham quarrelled 
over his head ; Brougham, now well on his downward 
course to absurdity, tried in vain to set himself beside 
Grey as the hero of the hour. The people of Scotland 
were for the moment thinking of what Grey had done 
for them ; not of what Brougham or Durham had done 
or proposed to do, though many of them were in agree- 
ment with Durham's advanced Liberal programme, 
which frightened Lord Grey. 

On the way back through Northumberland, where 
the same scenes of popular welcome were repeated, 

365 



2,66 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

Lady Grey wrote to her daughter, Lady Caroline, 
describing their experience in Scotland : 

As to the sight, no words can do justice to it, and still less 
to the feeling that produced it. It was a burst of enthusiasm 
from a whole nation ! And even Car admits that he would not 
have conceived it. In the streets [of Edinburgh] they took no 
notice of the Chancellor [Brougham], and no mention was made 
of him on any of the banners, tho' there were hundreds in 
honour of Car, besides those that belonged to the different trades. 
I tell you this, not because it was a sign of the Chancellor's being 
unpopular, but as a proof that the dinner was given to your 
Papa alone^ tho' the Chancellor is doing all he can to have 
it supposed it was a joint concern. His arms were not to be seen 
in any of the devices, while they were painted over Car's chair 
at the dinner in a way that I thought looked too royal. Indeed, 
I may say that he has been playing the part of King of Scotland, 
and poor /, unworthy as I am, was in consequence like the Queen 
— ^applauded every time I came to the window, and shewn up 
at the ball and dinner exactly as you have seen the poor Queen. 
It was very annoying to me at the time, tho' gratifying in 
fact. I had almost as many people to shake hands with as he 
had, and when we went to the shops we were followed by crowds 
of people, who put into my hands copies of verses, and presents 
of trifles — in short it was a degree of homage to him that I 
could not have conceived, and particularly for an ex-Minister. 

Lord Grey was seventy years old when he retired 
from public life in July 1834. He lived for eleven 
more years in complete retirement at Howick. His 
views became more and more conservative as he grew 
older, but he never again took part in politics, though 
in April 1835 he was warmly invited by his colleagues, 
with the King's full concurrence, to return either as 
Prime Minister, or if he preferred as Foreign Secretary.^ 

He outlived his son-in-law, Lord Durham, whose 

1 This correspondence is in the papers at Howick. The invitation 
is signed by Melboume, Lansdowne, Holland, Palmerston, and Spring 
Rice. Althorp had just retired. See also Holland's letter of April 12, 
in Add. MSS. 37297- 



LAST YEARS AT HOWICK 367 

last public service, the famous Canadian Report, helped 
to lay the foundations of Freedom and Empire.^ Grey 
felt himself an old man, on the August day in 1840, 
when he stood with Lady Grey outside Lambton Castle, 
watching the procession of fifty thousand people, on 
foot and on horseback, set out to carry to his resting- 
place that fiery lord, who had been both their ancestral 
chief and the champion of their democratic rights. 

Grey's last years at Howick were a long, mellow 
sunset, tranquil and happy with the sense of labour 
done. Lady Georgiana, with the harp on which she 
played so well the Scottish airs her father loved, was 
still at Howick. But most of the great family of 
children were now scattered, though often returning as 
guests to the old home. It was the era of the grand- 
children, on long visits. Pictures of Howick and its 
lord in these latter days, as the most hospitable and 
homelike of houses and the most pleasant of hosts, 
have been drawn by many different hands. * The very 
servants are of a breed that makes one feel at home,' 
wrote one frequent guest. But the most characteristic 
portrait of Lord Grey in retirement has been already 
given to the world in the delightful volumes of Creevey, 
who had known him so well in years gone by : 

Just as I was in the midst of writing the last sentence, Lord 
Grey stalked into the great library, his spectacles aloft upon his 
forehead, and I saw at once he was iox jaw, so I abandoned my 
letter for you and joined him. ... It would do you good to 
see me send him to bed every night at half after eleven o'clock, 
which is half an hour beyond his usual time. This I do regu- 

1 The legend that Durham did not write his own Report has no 
historic credentials, though it has most unfairly found its way into the 
Diet, of Nat. Biog. See Reid's Life of Durham. Grey thought that 
the conduct of the Melbourne Cabinet to Durham in Canada had been 
' very shabby.' Neither he nor Althorp would ever have treated a 
colleague so. Durham on his return from Canada behaved with extra- 
ordinary magnanimity to those who had wronged him, in order to 
facilitate the passage of the Canada Union Bill before he died. 



368 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

larly, and it amuses him much. He looks about for his book, 
calls his dog Viper, and out they go, he having been all day as 
gay as possible, and not an atom of that gall he was subject to 
in earlier life. . . . The same tranquillity and cheerfulness, 
amounting almost to playfulness, instead of subsiding have rather 
increased during my stay, and have never been interrupted by a 
single moment of thoughtfulness or gloom. He could not have 
felt more pleasure from carrying the Reform Bill, than he does 
apparently when he picks up half-a-crown from me at cribbage. 
A curious stranger would discover no out-of-the-way talent in 
him, no powers of conversation ; a clever man in discussion^ cer- 
tainly, but with no fancy, and no judgment (or very little) in 
works either of fancy or art. A most natural, unaffected, 
upright man, hospitable and domestic ; far surpassing any man 
one knows in his noble appearance and beautiful simplicity of 
manners, and equally surpassing all his contemporaries as a 
splendid public speaker. Take him all in all, I never saw his 
fellow ; nor can I see any imitation of him on the stocks. 

Lord Grey died on July 17, 1845, ^^^ "^^^ buried 
at Howick. Lady Grey survived him until 1 8 6 1 . 

Grey had not the genius of Fox or of Gladstone ; 
yet it was given to him to accomplish the work of Fox, 
and to succeed more completely than Gladstone. No 
man mediocre either in mind or character could have 
achieved that. And while he lacked the highest 
qualities of his predecessor and successor, he lacked 
also their faculty for making mistakes. 

To understand Grey's paramount influence in the 
Britain of 1 830-1 832 is to understand the world of 
that transition period, buried now beneath the leaves 
of many years ; it is to understand the position and 
outlook of those liberal-minded aristocrats peculiar to 
the history of our island, whose existence was one of 
the reasons why the political traditions and instincts 
that the English have inherited differ so profoundly 
from those of Germany, of France, or even of America. 

No statue or monument has been erected to Lord 
Grey in the precincts of Westminster. The new 



* FINIS CORONAT OPUS ' 369 

Houses of Parliament must serve him for a memorial. 
Big Ben and the Flag Tower are the symbols of what 
he did. The old Houses perished by fire, three months 
after his retirement. In place of the narrow, irregular 
labyrinth of mediaeval Westminster, so famous and so 
uncomfortable, there rose, in a fortunate hour, the 
more uniform, less romantic pile, spacious enough to 
house the new world of ordered progress, obedient 
to the movements of public opinion. That new 
world owed it to Lord Grey that it had obtained its 
political rights without a convulsion. He had inter- 
preted the need of the new, crowding generations, to 
the old generation of dignity and privilege, to which 
he himself belonged. He had stood between the living 
and the dead. 

In an age of biographies and memoirs, it chanced 
that no life of him was written. His tale remained 
untold. And already in the middle years of the 
century his widow thought that the world was for- 
getting the man to whom it owed the Reform Bill. He 
himself would have cared little. He had not sought 
the breath of popular applause when alive. Nor was 
it in pursuit of posthumous fame that he had dragged 
himself from Howick to Westminster so often and so 
unwillingly. When the first extravagances of early 
youth were over, he had asked three things of life : 
that he might enjoy domestic happiness beside a popu- 
lous hearth ; that he might prove himself honourable 
and high-minded in all the relations of life ; and that 
he might do something lasting for the liberties and 
for the welfare of his country. The fates, in most 
abundant measure, granted him all three. 



APPENDICES 

APPENDIX A 

' THE BILL ' IN EMBRYO 

The following passages are selected from Lord Grey's letters between 
1816 and 1820. From these it will appear that in 1816 he did not 
favour making Parliamentary Reform a sine qudb non of accepting office, 
but that in December 1820 he had begun to incline to the opposite 
view ; also that he then thought that at least a hundred seats should 
be taken away from the rotten boroughs (see p. 183, above). 

To Lord Holland, December 8, 1 8 1 6 : 

' My political creed is shortly this : 

1. Reduction of Establishments] 

2. Change of Foreign Policy \sine qua non, 

3. Catholic Emancipation j 

4. A moderate and gradual Reform of Parliament, not a sins 

qua non, but to be supported. 
' Whether I shall be able to do much to support such a plan of 
operations remains to be seen. I feel very much below the mark, and 
am sure I shall disappoint you all. I have no spirit or power left.' 

In a letter to George Ponsonby, written three days before this, 
Grey says just the same at rather greater length, defining the ' change 
of Foreign Policy ' desirable, as ' abandoning the principle of interference 
in the government of France.' 

December 26, 18 19 {to Lord Holland) : 

' A Reform of Parliament is, from all the information I receive, 
daily becoming more and more a subject of popular interest, and it will 
be impossible for any Party, looking to the support of pubhc opinion, 
to succeed without taking some more direct measure with that view 

371 



372 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

than Lord John Russell 's.^ I was rejoiced at the success of his speech, 
but a great part of his argument appeared to me to put the principle 
of Reform far beyond the limit to which he wished to confine it.* 

To Holland, April 23, 1820 : 

* As to Parliamentary Reform, you may be assured that the time 
is past when any half measures on this subject might have answered 
the purpose of satisfying the popular feeling, unless they could be accom- 
panied with measures of substantial relief — of which you can have no 
hope. The general principle of Reform, to be pursued with caution, 
and gradually and progressively carried into effect, is the language which 
I should hold, and leave the battle to be fought between the Government 
and the Reformers, preserving to myself, as far as might be possible, 
the ground of a mediator between them.' 

December 6, 1820 : 

' My dear Holland, — I have turned it in my mind over and over 
again, and I am now at last obliged to confess that I have not yet brought 
myself to any satisfactory conclusion as to the great and preliminary 
diificulty, whether we ought to make Reform a sine qua non, and if any, 
what. With respect to stipulating for Reform {i.e. Reform of Parlia- 
ment) at all, we must begin with these admissions. First, that we are 
not agreed on the principle, some of our most valuable friends and sup- 
porters objecting to it in to to. Secondly, that we are still less agreed 
as to the extent to which it should be carried. Thirdly, that we have 
no data on which we can build any material hope, that any very modified 
plan, such as that which you suggest, would gain that section of the 
public which, resting our acceptance of office on some concession of 
this nature, it must be intended to conciliate. 

' I am indeed convinced, as every rational man must be, that our 
Administration, if we should form one, could only stand upon public 
confidence and opinion, and that confidence and opinion I am strongly 
inclined to believe, in the present circumstances of the Country, could 
not be acquired and certainly not retained, if we were to put aside the 
question of a Reform of Parliament. But then what is the Reform 
that would have the effect we desire, and are we likely to be united in 
our opinions in favour of such a Reform ? I am persuaded that such 
a very modified plan as you suggest would not do ; it would satisfy 
nobody ; and, what is worse, it would be impossible to rest upon it as 
a definitive measure. With this view I do not think we could hope that 
less than the following outline would be effectual. Shortening the duration 
of Parliament at least to five years ; admitting copyholders to vote for 

1 On December 14 Lord John had made a motion for transferring 
the franchise, from boroughs where there had been proved to be gross 
bribery, to populous cities. 



APPENDIX B 373 

counties f and adding loo members to be divided between the large Towns 
and the most extensive and populous Counties ; taking away the same number 
from the representation of the most obnoxious boroughs?- Less than this 
I feel quite convinced would do little to conciliate public opinion, as 
far as that opinion depends upon Reform, and in demanding a Reform 
to this extent as a sine qua non, we should have the concurrence of the 
great bod7 of our friends ; or would our exclusion for a time, which 
would certainly be the consequence of our insisting on it, have the effect 
of giving us so much strength in public opinion as to enable us to force 
the Court before it is too late to carry this or any other measure ? 

' The more I write and the more I think the more I involve myself 
in doubt and perplexity, and am very anxious to collect the opinions 
of those whose opinions ought to have the greatest weight with us. 
Have you ever talked this matter over with Lansdowne ? can you tell 
me what he thinks ? or have you ever, as I think you once said you would, 
proposed to Mcintosh to make out a project on this most difficult ques- 
tion r My own feelings, if I had nothing but my own feelings and 
interests to consider, would be to insist upon such a Reform as I have 
stated, rather than incur all the labour, anxiety, and danger of under- 
taking the Government in a moment of such embarrassment, and with 
the certainty of being counteracted from the beginning, and ultimately 
betrayed and sacrificed by the Court on the first favourable opportunity.' 

For other quotations already published from Grey's political corre- 
spondence, 1817-22, see Butler, Reform Bill, pp. -^i-j, passim •, Reid's 
Life of Durham, chapter v. ; The tFellesley Papers, ii. 135-7 ; Brougham, 
Memoirs, ii. 444, 454. 



APPENDIX B 

grey's views of canning's policy, 1 822-1 8 27 

In 1822-3 Grey writes to Lord Holland expressing deep sympathy with 
the cause of the Liberal Spaniards against the aggression of the French 
reactionaries ; he thinks our Government ought to take more decided 
measures to protect Spain from invasion, repeal the Foreign Enlistment 
Act, ' make a naval demonstration and send a message to Parliament.' 

1 It is to be noted that this is the degree of disfranchisement proposed 
by Lord John Russell in his famous motion of April 1822 — a great 
advance on his motion of 18 19, which Grey had criticised as too meagre 
in principle. 



374 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

On February 19, 1823, he writes to his son Charles : 
' Any modification of the present Constitution of Spain, however 
slight, if made in compliance with the demands of the Allied Powers, 
would be a fatal admission of the right of interference, which, averse as I 
am to War (nobody can fear it more than I do), I would resist at any hazard. 
If we had held a firm and direct language at Verona, I cannot believe that 
the Allies would have ventured upon the measures to which they have 
now committed themselves.' 

To Lord Holland, January 2, 1824 : 

' Are you not delighted with the American speech ? ^ What a con- 
trast to the conduct and language of our Government last year ! I have 
no doubt it will be decisive in the question of South American Inde- 
pendence, with respect to which, after having bound Spain in the chains 
of France, Canning will have the glory of following in the wake of the 
President of the United States ! ' 

All through 1824, Grey in his letters acknowledges the good change 
in our foreign policy, but always wants Canning's actions to come sooner 
and to go further than they do, for example the recognition of South 
American Independence, actually made February 1825. 

To Holland, February 7, 1825 : 

' I do not mean that there was any resemblance between Canning 
and Castlereagh in personal character and conduct — God knows there 
cannot exist a greater difference between any two men, and I think it is in 
favour of Castlereagh. What I meant was that the result of their policy 
to the Country was much the same : witness Spain and Ireland. The 
sacrifice of Spain is justified by its having saved us from a War, and now 
the tardy and ungracious and uncertain recognition of America [viz. 
of the independence of the South American Republics] is also recom- 
mended by the hope of preserving peace. America [viz. the U.S.] 
has pursued an honourable, generous and direct policy and has found war 
neither to the right nor left.' 

To Lord Hozvick, February 19, 1827 {after Lord Lwerpool's illness) : 

' If Canning was in health and vigour, and could establish his ascen- 
dency, I think it would produce overtures to some of the opposition, and 
nommkment to Lansdowne, which I do not think it would be discreditable 
for them to accept, if a fair assurance were given them of a determined 
and bond fide support of the Catholic question ; by which I mean that it 
should be brought forward as a measure of the government^ 

^ President Monroe's message to Congress, December 2, 1823, con- 
taining the original ' Monroe Doctrine.' 



APPENDIX B 375 

To Holland, March 13,1827: 

' If Canning should be allowed to form a new Administration zvitk a 
firm assurance of carrying the Catholic question, I should be disposed to 
give him a fair support, and even not to press him prematurely on that 
subject.' 

To Holland, April 14, 1 827 : 

' I certainly have a rooted distrust of Canning, which can only be cured 
by "experience and the evidence of facts," and I certainly would take no 
place in an Administration of which he is the head ; much less in one 
in which, having already received the appointment, he comes, not to 
negotiate on equal terms, but to offer places in his Government — this 
would have been my feeling if I had been still engaged in active politics. 
But I am out of the question, and it will be for those who remain to con- 
sider, quite independently of me, what is right both for themselves and 
the Public ; and if they can come in, on terms creditable to themselves, and 
with a full assurance that the Catholic question is to be brought forward 
as a measure of Government, I do not say instanter, but within a convenient 
and reasonable time, I should not disapprove. To a Government not formed 
upon this principle I can give no support.^ 

The Catholic question was however again shelved, so Grey could not 
approve Canning's administration. While it lasted the correspondence 
of Grey and Holland is suspended. 

To Holland, September 16, 1827 {after Canning's death) : 

' I received your letter on Friday evening. I did not, either to 
Tavistock or Lord John, express my surprise at your not having written. 
When asked by others whether I had heard from you or Lord Lansdowne 
I have simply stated the fact, that I had not ; or at most may have lamented, 
as that certainly has been my feeling, the circumstances which, after so 
many years of the most confidential intercourse, had so entirely broken 
off all communication on political subjects between us. 

' It is too true that I cannot at all agree with you in your views either 
of the past or present state of the Administration. Barring the Catholic 
question — and from a passage in your letter even you appear to consider 
that question as given up for the present, virtually for ever, an opinion 
expressed by nobody more strongly than by Lord Lansdowne — barring 
the Catholic question I never could understand what the difference was 
between Peel and his followers and the present Tory Ministers which 
could make the re-appointment of the latter the least of all evils. There 
certainly is one evil greater, much greater, in my estimation, and that is 
the dissolution of the Whig party and the total destruction of its conse- 
quence and character.' 



376 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 



APPENDIX C 

THE QUESTION OF GREY TAKING OFFICE UNDER WELLINGTON, 1828-183O 

' His Majesty told me that he wished me to form a Government.' 
Lyndhurst must be Chancellor. ' Everything else is open to all mankind, 
except one person, Lord Grey.' — Wellington to Peel, January 9, 1828 
(Parker's Peel, ii. 27). See also Creevey Papers, ii. 151, February 7, 1 828; 

Lady Grey to Lord Grey, August 25, 1828: 

' My dearest Charles, — After we had taken our drive on Saturday 
Me. de Lieven arrived. Lambton was out riding. George ran away, 
and poor Louisa who was that day very unwell was just gone to her room, 
so that she found nobody but me. She was very gracious, and conse- 
quently very agreeable. But I could perceive that she was full of 
curiosity about you, having heard the reports of your joining the Adminis- 
tration, and very much bent upon squeezing out of me whatever I might 
know. You may imagine she got but little from me, for the best possible 
reason, that I had nothing to tell. Having convinced her of this fact, 
she then began to express her opinions how impossible it must be for you 
to leave your party, to abandon your old principles, etc., etc, adding 
'* Lord Grey m'a dit lut mtme tout recemment — *_/V ne suis pas un indwidu, 
mais chef de parti, et tout offre a mot seul serait une insulte! " I think she 
must have misunderstood you, for though I have no doubt you disclaimed 
all idea of coming into office yourself, I do not believe you assigned as a 
reason delicacy towards your former friends ! I could not help saying 
that, though I believed your coming into the Administration was quite 
out of the question, and that as far as I was concerned, I sincerely wished 
it might be so, yet after what happened last year I considered you as 
standing alone and perfectly free to support or oppose the Government as 
appeared best for the Country ; and that you must consider Measures 
and not the persons who proposed them. She caught at this, and said, 
*' Ah, Je vols qu'il est dejci dans le Minis tere." However, I believe I at 
last convinced her that I at least knew of no such arrangement.* 

Lady Grey to Lord Hozvick, January 1829 : 

' My dearest Henry, — I have just had a long conversation with Lord 
Rosslyn which, after all, tells us no more than what we had before heard, 
viz., that he believes perfectly in the D. of W.'s sincerity that he is anxious 
to gain your father's support, to his Govt., or rather that he should form 
a part of it, but that he has at present no hope of obtaining the King's 



APPENDIX C 377 

consent to offer him any place which he could accept. He [D. of W.] 
talked of him [Grey] in the highest terms and expressed himself as anxious 
to consult his wishes upon all points where he could serve him without 
appearing to compromise him, and added that while things remained in this 
state he could not with any delicacy authorise any person to mention the 
subject to Lord Grey, feeling, as he did, uncertain of ever being able to 
act as he wished. In the course of this conversation with Lord Rosslyn the 
Duke said (what you may recollect we were told before) that it was very 
possible the King might consent to take Lord Grey, provided he could 
turn him [D. of W.] himself out. I questioned Lord Rosslyn as to his own 
opinion on all this, and he assured me that he felt perfect confidence in the 
Duke, that he was certain his esteem and admiration for your father was 
unfeigned, and besides that he must feel how much strength he would gain 
by his accession. He seems to think, indeed he said so, that nothing can be 
more insecure than the Duke's situation. The King scarcely attempts to 
conceal his dislike to him, and every appointment however trifling is the 
cause of dispute, and may prove the cause of the dissolution of the Ministry. 
Much of this may be attributed to the Duke of Cumberland, but more 
to the King's own disposition — at present he seems to hate all public men, 
and perhaps that feeling being so general, is the reason why he goes on 
with his present Ministry. Under all these circumstances. Lord Rosslyn 
is anxious that your father should stay here out of the way till the course 
of events is seen — were he to attend the opening of the session, many 
things might occur to force him, even against his will, into an active opposi- 
tion to the Duke, of which all the Canning party would be too happy to 
avail themselves to try to get him over to their party, and we know that 
when people act eagerly on the same side, it is not always easy to keep a 
line of separation. You say I am vindictive. I am afraid I am so, if 
feeling more averse to ever acting with those by whom he was so ill-used 
can be reckoned so. Besides I firmly believe that it would not answer 
even in an ambitious view. He might assist Lord Lansdovme and the 
Huskissons to overthrow the Duke, but it would be to bring them into 
power, from which they would again exclude him, and I see no reason to 
play their game.' 

Grey to Brougham {Howie k, February 5, 1830) : 

' I sincerely wish to support the Duke of Wellington's Administration, 
but every day adds to my doubts : more especially when I consider the 
sort of recruits that are sought for and the maimer of enlisting them.' 

May 3 , 1830. Lord Hotvick's private diary : 

' I remained talking politics to my father. He is, I am happy to say, 
getting quite as much inclined to oppose the Duke as I can be.' 

Wellington to Fitzgerald, December 26, 1830 {Despatches, vii. 383): 
' Lord Grey's conduct from the time he came to town last spring 



378 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

rendered it impossible to make an oiFer to him and to some of his friends 
upon the accession of the present king.' 

The belief expressed by Palmerston {Life^ i. 381) that an offer was 
made to take in Grey in the summer of 1830 is, therefore, incorrect. 

In EUenborough's Diary, ii. 438, November 17, 1830, at the time of 
the Duke's resignation, we read : 

' The King (William IV) asked the Duke's opinion of Lord Grey, 
and whether he had ever had any communication with him. The Duke 
said No. The King knew the personal objections the late King had to 
Lord Grey, and he (the Duke) could not, though often pressed by Lord 
Grey's friends, have any communication with him without either deceiv- 
ing him or deceiving the King ; and he would not do either. The King 
asked what sort of a man Lord Grey was. The Duke said he really did 
not know. He had the reputation of being an ill-tempered, violent man, 
but he knew very little of him. He had never had any political con- 
versation with him. The King was much agitated and distressed.' 

See also Life of Disraeli, i. 388, Lord Lyndhurst's recollections : 

' Once the intention of the Duke to admit the Grey party. Took 

a sudden prejudice to Grey. Something happened on a coal committee. 

Told L. afterwards he had seen enough of Grey that morning to have 

nothing to do with him.' 



APPENDIX D 

FORMATION OF THE GREY MINISTRY 

' Private. Thursday morning [November 18, 1830]. 

' My dear Grey, — I have no engagement that can prevent my 
receiving you and the other members of your Cabinet at nine this 
evening. But as you are to see Brougham at four, I should be glad 
to have a few minutes' conversation with you on that vital point, if 
possible, before. I would call at any time when you can see me alone 
for a moment. 

' Since we met yesterday I have thought over the subject of the 
Foreign Office, which you pressed so kindly upon me, and which I 
owed it to you and to myself not to decline without full consideration. 
But indeed I must do so. Looking back to the experience of the last few 
years, I am certain that a long continuance of sedentary employment 
would disqualify me from doing myself justice, and make me a less 



APPENDIX D 379 

efficient member of your Government in other respects than I should 
be if 70U chuse [sic] to give me the Presidency of the Council, with the 
comparative freedom belonging to it. And Holland would, I believe, 
be quite as well satisfied with the Chancellorship of the Dutchy [sic], 
the salary of which is not inferior, with some Church and other patronage. 
' Would not Palmerston suit the Foreign Office better than the 
Home Office ? And might not Sir J. Graham do for the Home ? I 
venture merely to throw this out, as I do anything else that occurs to 
me, for your consideration. — Ever yours, 

* Lansdowne.' 

' Thursday [Nov. 18, 1830]. 

' Dear Holland, — So much had passed in repeated conversations 
with LansdowTie, that I had no longer any hopes of eifecting anything 
by my powers of persuasion ; and his written determination this morning 
was so positive that I considered the matter as absolutely concluded, 
and Palmerston has the Office. 

' Lansdowne, then, is to be President, which he desired ; and you 
must be Chancellor of the Duchy — a thing suggested by the King him- 
self yesterday — and there is some very nice Patronage. 

' I have not time for more, as I am now going to St. James's. But 
what is omitted may keep till Lansdowne House, where I shall hope 
to meet you punctually at nine. I wanted to call this morning, but I 
have not had a single moment. Brougham has just left me couleur de 
rose. It was my unfortunate note to you, delivered in his presence, 
that did all the mischief. 

' Ever yours. Grey.' 

It is said {(Quarterly Review, cxxvi. 48) that Grey at first 
intended to offer the Chancellorship to Lord Lyndhurst, but was dis- 
suaded by Althorp. Lyndhurst had served Canning, Goderich, and 
Wellington as Chancellor, and was supposed to have adaptable views 
on poHtics. The story is not improbable, for Grey liked Lyndhurst, 
and was anxious to avert his opposition ; but the evidence is not first 
hand. 

The greatest searchings of heart, except on the Brougham question, 
were on the question whether to have Lord Carnarvon in the Cabinet — 
the alternative apparently being Durham, whom Grey wisely preferred, 
to the disgust of some of his colleagues and some even of his own family. 
In one of his letters of these Cabinet-making days. Grey writes : ' Car- 
narvon goes between me and my rest.' Lord Carnarvon was very angry 
at his omission, but as he became a leader of the opposition to the Reform 
Bill, Grey's preference of Durham was doubly justified. 

Lord Grey's correspondence during the making of his Government 
affords many side-lights on human nature, on the whole not too discredit- 
able. Two very great noblemen, not counting Carnarvon, applied for 



38o LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

places in his Cabinet, but in vain ; they did not subsequently support 
the Reform Bill. The Duke of Devonshire, on the other hand, accepts 
the post of Lord Chamberlain in a very unselfish and friendly letter, 
asking Grey to think again if the post might not be better bestowed to 
secure the support of some less staunch adherent. 

Pathetic interest attaches to the letters of Sir Sidney Smith, Admiral 
of the White, the same age as Grey and long in retirement. He writes, 
on November 17, asking first to be a Lord of the Admiralty, and when 
Grey refuses that, writes again, on November 25, asking to be made 
Master-General of the Ordnance, on the ground of his having shown 
his knowledge of land fortification and artillery when in 1799 he repulsed 
Buonaparte at Acre. ' I was opposed to an oiEcer supposed to be a 
consummate master of the art, and enabled sailors, marines, and Turks 
to foil him, sustaining twelve formidable assaults, and literally constructing 
outworks according to modern rules under a constant fire at duel distance, 
our neutral ground never having been more than ten yards.' Grey, 
however, replies that the post cannot be held by a naval ofiicer, however 
distinguished. 

A brother-squire of Northumberland, Fenwick of Longwitton, writes 
' to call your Lordship's attention to my son. Captain William Fenwick, 
of the Welsh Fusiliers.' The interest lies in Grey's reply that ' I have 
not the power of interfering with the Patronage of the Army, and advance- 
ment, now very difiicult in that way, is only to be obtained by purchase. 
It is only by paying very largely that I can hope to obtain promotion 
for my ovm sons.' The latter statement was only too true. 



APPENDIX E 

THE FRAMING OF THE REFORM BILL 

Lord Durham to Lord John Russell, Oct. 22, 1834 (Lambton 
MSS. Being an answer to Russell's letter to Durham, Oct. 19, 1834, 
printed in Russell, Early Correspondence, ii. 5 1-4) : 

' Shortly after the formation of the Government, Lord Grey asked 
me, in the House of Lords, if I would assist him in preparing a Reform 
Bill. I answered that I would do so with the greatest pleasure. He 
then said, " You can have no objection to consult Lord John Russell ? " 
I replied, " Certainly not, but the reverse." In consequence of this 
conversation, I mentioned the subject to you. We then agreed to asso- 
ciate with ourselves Sir James Graham and Lord Duncaimon. The 
Committee thus formed met regularly at my house in Cleveland Row. 



APPENDIX E 381 

I acted as Chairman, and in that capacity signed the daily minutes of 
our proceedings.' [I have failed to find any trace of these minutes.] 
* Lord Grey referred to me all the Memorials from different Towns 
and Bodies, Deputations from whom I received, in consequence, in 
Cleveland Row. 

' I proposed that you should be requested to give in a plan, because, 
as it was a measure which must necessarily originate in the House of 
Commons, you of all its members had the best right to be entrusted 
with it, having been last in possession of the question. 

' You did so. [This original ' plan ' of Lord John Russell's is printed 
in his English Constitution, pp. xxxvi-xxxviii.] It was carefully dis- 
cussed, and after many alterations, to some of which you have referred 
[in letter of October 19, 1834], the Measure as finally agreed upon was 
submitted to Lord Grey. [For official synopsis of the measure as 
submitted to Lord Grey by the Committee of Four on January 14, 
see Reid's Durham, i. 238-43, or William IV' s Correspondence, i. 

461-3-] 

' What you state respecting the qualification and the ballot is quite 
correct [J. R.'s letter of October 19]. I proposed Triennial Parlia- 
ments, which at your suggestion were made quinquennial. When the 
plan was submitted to the Cabinet, I was confined to my room by severe 
illness. I heard, however, from Sir James Graham, and also from Lord 
Grey, that Ballot had been struck out.' 

Durham then states that Sir James Graham asked him to attend 
the next Cabinet, as he feared Brougham was to oppose abolishing of 
Rotten Boroughs. However, Brougham said nothing on that, but tried 
to have Althorp instead of Lord John as proposer of the Bill in the 
Commons. 

A letter of Sir James Graham's to Durham on his sick bed, dated 
January 25, 1831 {Lambton MSS.), refers to one of these Reform Bill 
Cabinets : ' The measure on the whole well received. Brougham alone 
dissentient, and disposed to carp by raising little points when he found 
no real objections, and very much inclined to defend the nomination 
Boroughs. We have another Cabinet to-day at four on the grand 
question.' January 27 : ' Pray come to the Cabinet to-morrow. Althorp 
and others wish to lower the qualification. I am afraid I foresee 
difficulties.' 

The borough qualification was eventually lowered from ;^20 to ;^io 
householders, to compensate for the rejection of the Ballot, but not 
till the middle of February, and then chiefly as a result of Lord 
John Russell's strong letter of February 13, 1831, printed in Butler, 
190, note. That letter of Russell's fully bears out the following state- 
ment in a letter of Durham to Grey, October 18, 1834 : ' My recom- 
mendation of the Jury or j^20 qualification [instead of j^io] was dependent 
on the adoption of the Ballot, which, as you know, was proposed in 



382 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

the report which I drew up and delivered to you, signed by myself as 
Chairman of the Committee, and by Lord John Russell, Sir James 
Graham, and Lord Duncannon, who composed it.' 

All other important documents that I know of on the framing of 
the Bill have been already printed, and will be found in the passages 
already referred to in this Appendix and in Butler, 179 (Althorp's plan 
of Reform, December 1830); Lord John Russell's English Constitution 
(1865), pp. xxiii-xli ; Parker's Graham, i. 117—22; also Butler, 173, 
note I, on Graham ; William IV' s Correspondence, i. 8 1-2, note ; Brougham 
Memoirs, iii. 92-3, 523-4. 



APPENDIX F 

THE DISSOLUTION OF APRIL 1 83 1 

The following letter of Grey to Wellesley (Add. MSS., B.M., 37297), 
not printed in the Wellesley Papers, shows that the King's consent to 
dissolve surprised Grey. 

'■April 21, 1 83 1. 

' My dear Lord, — When I received your Lordship's very kind 
letter yesterday, I did not expect that I should have been able to answer 
it as one of the King's Ministers. 

' A proposal had then been sent to His Majesty to dissolve the 
Parliament, and from all the previous communications on this subject 
there seemed great reason to expect a decided opposition on his part to 
this measure. Indeed, when, yesterday, I laid before him the Cabinet 
Minute, the seriousness of his manner, and the cordial distress which 
he experienced, tho' nothing could exceed his kindness, did not lessen 
that apprehension. 

' He desired the time necessary to consider so important a question, 
and I have this morning received his answer in an admirably drawn 
paper, stating all the objections he had felt, and all the difficulties which 
he still feared ; but concluding with an expression of his consent, and of 
his undiminished confidence in his Ministers. Nothing can be more 
entitled to the highest praise than this conduct. 

' A Dissolution therefore is resolved upon ; and the question has 
been, whether it should be immediate, or that it should wait till certain 
measures, of some urgency, should be completed. There are difficulties 
on both courses, but those of delay seem to preponderate, and the final 
determination, which will be taken to-night, will probably be for imme- 
diate dissolution.' 



APPENDIX F 383 

The story told in Roebuck's History of the Whig Ministry (ii. 
148-51), drawn from talks with Brougham in later years, is entirely 
fictitious as regards the interview on April 22, between the King, Grey, 
and Brougham. It represents Brougham as saving a desperate situation 
by hardly persuading the King to dissolve, whereas he had already agreed 
to dissolve in his letter to Grey of the day before. The only questions 
on April 22 related to the day and the mode of the prorogation to dis- 
solve, and even on those points Grey told his son that the King needed 
no persuasion, either by himself or Brougham. The evidence of all 
this was published in 1867, in William's Correspondence, i. 229 and 
234-6, note by Henry, third Earl Grey ; and it is confirmed by the 
above letter to Wellesley. But the following further note by the third 
Earl Grey has never yet been published : 

Note by Henry, third Earl Grey. 

' Some extracts from Croker's diary which have been lent by Mr. 
GiiFard to Frederick have been shown to me. These extracts contain 
accounts of conversations Croker had with Brougham in January 1839 
and 1843. In the first there is an entirely untrue account of what passed 
with the King, when my father and Brougham went to him at Windsor, 
respecting the creation of peers in May 1832, but into that I need not 
now enter. What is more material is the account Brougham then gave 
of the dissolution of 183 1. This story is quite different from that given 
in Roebuck's and Molesworth's books on Brougham's authority. In 
these books it is said that the King was only asked to dissolve by Brougham 
in my father's presence on the morning of the 22nd of April, and it is 
on the question of dissolution or no dissolution that he represents himself 
as having so successfully worked upon the King, when my father was 
afraid to speak to him. In his conversation with Croker, on the other 
hand, he says what is true — that the only point discussed in the audience 
given to Brougham and my father by the King before the Council for 
the dissolution of Parliament on the morning of April 22nd, was whether 
the King should go down to the House of Lords in person. 

' I have no doubt, from the information contained in a letter I lately 
received from Wm. Bathurst, that it was for the first time proposed to 
the King in this audience that he should go to the House of Lords in 
person, instead of sending Commissioners to prorogue Parliament, with 
a view to its dissolution. I also think it probable that Brougham's 
account of the manner in which this change in the mode of proceeding 
was brought about may be true. He says that the evening before, or 
that morning early (I cannot clearly make out which), the Ministers 
learned from Courtenay (then Clerk of the House of Lords and after- 
wards Lord Devon) that a consultation was going on, in the room Lord 
Wyndford had as Dep^- Speaker at the House of Lords, between the 
D. of Wellington, Eldon, Lyndhurst, and a few others, and that they 



384 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM .BILL 

had sent for two volumes of the Journals. It was ascertained (so 
Brougham says) that they had discovered that Commiss"^"- to pro- 
rogue Park, can only be called in on a question being put, so that 
the House would have had the power of adjourning, which Brougham 
says would have defeated the Govt. In this he is wrong ; for as 
FoUett observed in the conversation Croker records, the dissolution 
might have been effected by proclamation — and I remember that what 
it was really desired to prevent, was the carrying of an address against 
the dissolution, which might have had a bad effect in the country, though 
it would not have stopped the measure.' 



APPENDIX G 

' BEAR ' ELLICE AS WHIP DURING THE REFORM BILL 

The appointment of EUice as Whip proved very fortunate in the public 
interest. A letter of Charles Wood to Lord Grey, on July 3, 1832, 
after the passing of the Reform Bill, records the reasons why EUice's 
continuance as Whip is ' indispensable.' ' Perhaps the greatest fault 
in conducting the affairs of the Government in the House of Commons 
has been the ignorance of the Cabinet of the feelings of their supporters 
in the House. Stanley has had the Irishmen disgusted the greater 
part of the session for want of this. Palmerston, Grant, Graham, and 
J. Russell are seldom in the House. 

' But Ellice has great influence with the old Whig party to whom 
he belongs ; with city men and merchants from his mercantile connexion ; 
with the radicals whom on many points he agrees with ; with the Scotch- 
men as a countryman ; with the Irishmen whom he feeds. Besides being 
the most good-natured man alive, conciliatory and familiar with every- 
body. I wiU say nothing of his knowledge of business, his experience 
of the H. of C, his intimacy with Sir H. Taylor, Hardinge, the Speaker, 
etc' 

No wonder, therefore, that Campbell, who complained on January 
22, 1831, that EUice's appointment 'did not bode well,' afterwards 
admitted that ' he had more to do with carrying the Bill than any other 
man.' 



APPENDIX H 38 J 



APPENDIX H 

PEER-MAKING AND THE 'DAYS OF MAY ' 

The following quotations from MS. letters, together with those given 
in the text above, or already published in William's Correspondence, 
Brougham'' s Memoirs, Butler's Passing of the Great Reform Bill, Le 
Marchant's Althorp, and Parker's Graham, will make clear to students 
the various stages of Grey's thought and conduct, in the matter of peer- 
making, and during the 'Days of May.' 



Grey to Holland, October 30, 1831 : 

' With respect to the creation of Peers, it is urged without any 
knowledge or consideration of the circumstances of the case. It is 
obviously impossible, with a view to the number that would be required, 
to counteract the majority. A few may be made, if there is thought 
to be advantage in it ; but even in a limited number, may there not be 
some inconvenience, as in Dorsetshire and Cambridgeshire, in the new 
elections which they would occasion, which we have no friends to 
support, or for which our rich adversaries are ready to contribute any- 
thing ? I will endeavour to open a communication with the Bishop 
of London. But he will of course want modifications and we can 
offer none that would satisfy him. This is the great difficulty in the 
way of any attempt at conciliation. I don't believe, however, that the 
Lords will, a second time, commit the mistake of throwing out the 
Bill on the 2nd reading. They will probably endeavour to alter it in 
Committee, which may prove more embarrassing to us.' November 3, 
1 83 1 : 'I return McCaulay's [nV] letter. I acknowledge all the right 
that is due to his opinion, but it would have had more influence with 
me if it had been expressed more temperately.' November 15, 1831 : 
' I received your letter and Allen's paper, which, like everything that 
comes from him, is very good. But he overlooks the effect of taking at 
once 50 or 60 great landed proprietors out of the House of Commons 
and the inconvenience of so many elections.' 

Grey to Sir Francis Burdett, November 24, 1831 : 

' Supposing the majority of 41 to remain unshaken, is it possible 
to counteract it by a new creation ? Who can say how many more 
would be required ? Certainly more than 41. For you may be assured 
that such an attempt would lose us many of those by whom we have 

2 c 



386 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

hitherto been supported. It is a question then which goes to the 
absolute destruction of the House of Lords, an event which I certainly 
did not contemplate in endeavouring to reform the House of Commons. 
And the effect on the H. of C. itself would scarcely be less 
pernicious, by withdrawing from it so great a portion of the property 
of the country. I must therefore say quieta prius tentanda, and that 
time and confidence ought to be given us for this purpose. If all is 
unsuccessful and the measure cannot be carried, without what would 
be as bad as losing it, my lot is cast. Having done all I can constitu- 
tionally do, I must retire. But I hope it will not come to this.' 

Grey's change of view at Christmas time in favour of peer-making 
has been described in the text above (p. 331). 

Grey to Holland, January i, 1832 : 

' There are two particular points to be settled, the concurrence of 
the Cabinet and the King : from Lansdowne's letter to me I am afraid 
he will positively oppose ; the objections of Palmerston are, I hear, 
scarcely less strong. Melbourne will be adverse, but I should think 
more reconcileable and so also the Duke of Richmond. The King 
as you are aware would dislike the thing to the greatest degree ; and I 
have less hope of overcoming his repugnance, which will be confirmed 
by the concurrence in his opinion of some of the most important 
members of the Government, since a conversation which he had on 
this subject with Sir Herbert Taylor has been reported to me by the 
Duke of Richmond. If Lansdovme and Palmerston, or one of them, 
should resign it would in the present circumstances of the Government 
be fatal. 

' I enclose letters which I have had from Brougham, Lambton, and 
Coke, on the subject. The course advised by the first' ['twelve at 
once,' as an earnest of more] ' is that to which I most incline. But the 
difficulties I have stated may very likely make it impossible.' 

Grey to Holland, Pavilion, Brighton, January 4, 1832 : 

' My conversation with the King has been very satisfactory, tho* 
he evidently feels great anxiety with respect to the subject of it. His 
kindness, confidence and fair dealing were such as I have always experi- 
enced from him. I cannot say more. I can have no doubt that he 
will do what we advise, but he desires to have it in writing. This 
must therefore be the subject of our deliberation on Saturday. I do 
not think the King well. He has a cold, which is of no consequence, 
but his drowsiness exceeds anything I have before seen. He really 
cannot keep himself awake for five minutes when you are talking to him, 
except on such a subject as we had to discuss to-day. Don't repeat 
what I have said about the King. The Queen civil, but her civility 
as cold as the weather.' January 5 : ' I have nothing material to add 



APPENDIX H 3g7 

to what I said yesterday. I have drawn up a minute of what passed 
between the King and me, which he says is perfectly correct, but to 
which he intends to add some observations. I never saw him in such 
a state of anxiety ; but there can be no doubt of the sincerity of his desire 
to support the present Government, and he has evidently made up his 
mind to do the needful — tho' accompanied with an if\ he said to me 
to-day that he saw no other alternative. He is also more inclined to a 
good batch at once, than to a small one, with one after. But he wishes 
new creations to be avoided, with the exceptions of the two, and the 
addition to be confined to Eldest Sons — creations of heirs to Barrens, 
and Scotch and Irish Peers.' 

[' Barrens ' means peers with no children — a mild joke started by 
Holland.] 

On January 1 5 the King, as a result of these negotiations, gave Grey 
the written promise quoted above (p. 332). 

Grcj to Holland, February 25, 1832 : 

* Certainly our prospects in the Lords are not satisfactory, and I am 
quite overpowered by the responsibility of deciding between opposite 
courses, both of which are exposed to so much difEculty and danger/ 

Holland to Grey, February 26, 1832 : 

* From my observation of Whamcliffe, I suspect you would not 
lose his vote, though he might lose his temper, if 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30 
were created to-morrow. And it is very possible that many of the 
14 or 23 converts might do like him — pout at the creation, but yet not 
venture to vote against the 2nd reading after all.' Grey, however, 
continued to differ from Holland on this point, partly, no doubt, because 
he knew that Whamcliffe had a fortnight before told Sir Herbert Taylor 
that he and his friends would oppose the Bill at every stage if peers were 
made {William's Correspondence, ii. 193). 

In an undated letter (of January 1832, I think) Holland suggests 
to Grey constitutional arguments to use with the King : 

' If he does not agree, exclusive of immediate consequences, which 
are so terrible that they overwhelm and supersede all other considera- 
tions, there is one which may possibly escape him, and which no King 
would or ought to contemplate with satisfaction : by waiving the exercise 
of a prerogative at a moment of such urgency, and when it would be so 
grateful to the people, he waives it in truth for ever, he spikes at once 
the gun which was reserved for extraordinary occasions, and by avowing 
that he will or can never revert to it, places practically the House of 
Lords in a state of independence of the Crown, or rather of authority 
over it, in which they never have been.' 

All through March the King, Grey, and Holland are in constant 
communication as to the chances of the Second Reading in the Peers, 



388 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

making out and comparing their lists of promises, etc. — e.g. March i6, 
1832, Holland to Grey: 'The King bade me compare my list with 
others, and give him the result before next Thursday.' In the list he 
attaches, Holland prophesies a draw — 185 to 185. (It was actually 
184 for, and 175 against.) 

But in April, as the crisis approaches, the King gets colder, as evinced 
in his letter of April 5, printed in his Correspondence. 

Grey to Holland, April 6, 1832 : 

' On the King's letter there cannot be two opinions. I have written, 
« en attendant " Cabinet, to say that we did not press for a decision on a 
contingent event, except under the inevitable necessity of acting instantly, 
if the Bill should be rejected, on one or other of the alternatives which 
had been submitted to him. If he prefers our resignation, the question is 
settled, and that, certainly, is what I should prefer.' 

Grey to Brougham, April 14, 1832 : 

' The King seemed pleased with the result [the Second Reading of 
the Bill in the Peers]. But I am not quite easy about him. I suspect 
he is tormented to death by all the people about him. He told me that 
the Duke of Cumberland was loud in his praises of you. This must 
please you — laudari a laudato viro.'' 

I fear the Prime Minister is here venturing to be satirical about H.R.H. 

Grey to Holland, April 26, 1832 : 

' I received your letter yesterday. I really do not see how I can 
have more frequent intercourse with the King, could it even do any good. 
He does not ask me to Windsor, and I have no business to take me there. 
Brougham has been, but was not asked to dinner. Anglesey was there 
on Tuesday, and both had long conversations with him, which equally 
indicated the strong impression that has been made upon him by con- 
stant opportunity, and I am not without suspicion that the opponents , 
of the Government contrive, unsuspected by him, to convey to him 1 
their versions through the numerous channels which his constant 
entourage opens to them.' 

May 9, 1832 : ' Dear Holland, our resignations are accepted. 
Yours, Grey. Wednesday.' 

Holland to Grey, May 12, 1832 : 

' Is it possible that the King has announced his adhesion to the Bill, 
the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill ? We should well consider our 
line and act up to it in entire concert. As to the publick, if they are 
really to get the Bill, there may be some inclination in them not to look 
further, but they should be made aware that nothing but a creation of 
Peers would relieve them from the permanent influence of the Lords.' 



APPENDIX H 389 

Holland to Grey, May 13, 1832 : 

' If the Bill is moved and supported by Wellington, et sunt qui 
credere possunt, what is to be our tone ? Silence, forbearance ? 
Acquiescence and good wishes mixed with apprehension ? Invective ? 
Or ridicule ? The last would be to me the most natural, for I really 
can hardly refrain from laughing when I think of a change beyond any 
farce, except perhaps a harlequin farce, exhibited in the grave assembly 
about whose honour and dignity I have heard so much, and played by 
the great hero of the age.' 

Grey to Holland, May 13, 1832: 

' I know nothing positive. The reports which abound will, of 
course, have reached you. I begin to be afraid the attempt may fail. 
But I trust the Duke's obstinacy and pride, to risk anything rather than 
submit to the disgrace of being obliged to give up the task assigned to 
him, after having thrown the whole country into confusion, acknowledg- 
ing his inability to perform it. In the meantime the language of the 
people about the Court is very high : — The Government is now in the 
hands of those who have wise heads and stout hearts, and the King, tho' 
he sees his difficulties, will meet them with unflinching determination.^ 

Holland to Grey, May 14, 1832 : 

' I think somehow or another Wellington will have the sense to 
avoid appointing Aberdeen ' [to the Foreign Office, which he had held 
in the Duke's last Ministry], ' and though it would do him mischief to 
place him there, I cannot wish him to do so, for, much as I hate, dread 
and despise the D. of W.'s ministry, I am not sure I do not hate and 
dread war still more. 

' I highly approve one opinion in Joseph Hume's speech : If the 
Whigs are in, the people will be satisfied with this reform ; if not, they 
must have more. Let them hold and act up to that language, and we 
shall beat the rascals in a month.' 

Grey to Holland, May 14 {late), 1832 : 

' I have heard nothing of arrangements, but what has passed in the 
House of Commons makes me fear that they may not be complete. I 
wish to God they were fairly in office ; but I still depend, as I told you 
yesterday, on the pride and obstinacy of the Duke.' 

May 1 5 : ' I believe all you say is quite right ; the truth is that never 
was a captive more desirous of escaping from prison than I am from 
my present situation. But I will do my duty. Many of the things, 
however, which you urge will require consideration. We must not 
be found wanting, but we must be careful not to push matters too far. 
I have heard nothing since this morning, but I still believe the Duke 
will persevere, and that an administration tale quale will be formed in 
the course of the day.' 



390 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

May 1 5 {later) : ' I have heard nothing more. I have ordered the 
Cabinet to be summoned for two to-morrow.' 

(For Holland's letter to Grey of May 1 5-16, see Butler, 405, note.) 

I do not think it necessary to discuss the absurd charge vs^hich 
Brougham in his old age gradually evolved against himself and Grey, 
that they would have been afraid to act on the King's permission of 
May 18, to make Peers, if the Peers had at the last moment turned 
refractory. Such criminal poltroonery, which must have plunged the 
country, without leadership, into a welter of blood and confusion, was 
far indeed from the Grey or the Brougham of 1832. The question 
is well treated in Butler, 413-14. And the evidence of Grey's son 
Henry, as to his father's views and intentions {Edinburgh Review, 1871, 
July, p. 291), is worth much more than one of Brougham's variable 
imaginings. 

Two letters from very exalted personages, in favour of peer-making, 
are not without interest. Early in March 1832 the Duke of Sussex, 
in whose veins the blood of George III flowed commingled with a very 
sturdy Liberalism, wrote to Grey : 

' I am morally convinced that without such a creation of Peers, you 
will not be able to succeed. Should any objection be started, my answer 
is that the Whigs have been out of ofEce for upwards of seventy years ; 
that for the worst of purposes the Tory Party have during that period 
doubled the Peerage, an evil to be deeply deplored, but which can now 
only be counteracted by making a copious and proportionate addition 
of popular and independent men to the aristocracy of the country.' 

Leopold, King of the Belgians, who was in close personal corre- . 
spondence with Grey about Belgian affairs from 1 830-1834, wrote to 1 
him on March 9, 1832 : 'It appears by reports on which I can rely 
that the King of Holland still clings to the hope that a defeat of the 
Reform Bill would give him new chances, and that he has recommended 
to his agents in this country not to relax in their efforts till this is settled. 
This shows you of what importance this Reform Bill is, not only to 
England but to Europe in general. The opposition to this Bill is un- 
fortunately headed by men of uncommon bad faith. I think every 
measure which will ensure its success ought to be adopted? 

The careful underlining of the last eight words makes it clear that 
His Majesty meant something very special and very definite — obviously 
peer-making. 



APPENDIX J 391 



APPENDIX J 

LORD grey's retirement 

Lord Wellesley's famous letter to Lord Grey of June 21, 1834 (see 
p. 363, above), begins as follows : 

' My dear Lord, — Understanding from some communications with 
Mr. Littleton, that the omission of those clauses in Protective Act which 
confer extensive and extraordinary powers of preventing meetings, etc. 
on the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, would facilitate other measures of 
importance in their progress through Parliament, and would also secure 
the re-enactment of other important provisions of the Act ; I think it 
may be convenient to your Lordship to receive an early statement of my 
sentiments on the subject. ... I carmot therefore state that I consider 
the preservation of the clauses respecting Meetings, as they now stand 
in the Act, to be essential to the public tranquillity of Ireland.' 

Grey to We He sky, ^a/y 8, 1834 : 

' My dear Lord, — When I wrote last to your Excellency I was in 
hopes that the effects of Mr. Littleton's indiscretion would have blown 
over. But it appears to have been greater than I had imagined, and 
its consequences have become more serious. 

' Any communication with Mr. O'ConneU, even of the most general 
nature, I should have thought discreditable to the Government, and 
highly objectionable. But when it went the length of exposing to him 
the secrets of the Government, and the opinions of your Excellency, 
what but the result, which has followed, could be expected ? That 
such a confidential communication, with a person so little to be trusted, 
should be made without even a hint of it being given to the Person who, 
however unworthily, is placed at the head of the Government, or with 
the Secretary for the Home Department, is still more surprising. 

' I acquit Mr. Littleton of everything but imprudence, and hoping 
that the effect of this would be got over, I had, when he offered his 
resignation, desired that he would retain his office. In doing this I 
was actuated not less by personal regard for him, and by a desire not 
to separate, than by the feeling that, at this moment, his retirement 
from a situation, the duties of which he had so ably discharged, would 
be of great detriment to the Public : more particularly when so many 
important measures, and imprimis the Tithe Bill, were in progress. 

' All these considerations, however, have been set aside, by wha' 



392 LORD GREY OF THE REFORM BILL 

passed last night in the House of Commons, of which the best explana- 
tion will be found in the published debates. The consequence is that 
Althorp finds himself placed in so disagreeable a situation, that he feels 
it impossible for him to continue in the Administration. He has, there- 
fore, this morning sent to me his resignation, which I have transmitted 
with my own, as the necessary and unavoidable consequence, to the King. 
I had no alternative, as without Lord Althorp it would be impossible 
for me to form a Treasury Bench, equal to the conduct of public affairs, 
in the House of Commons.' 

Grey to We lies ley, July 12, 1834: 

' My resignation was inevitable after Lord Althorp's and I am not 
inclined to blame him for resigning. After the double attack from 
O'Connell and Peel, both falling upon the Government and urging the 
production of your private letters, there was no hope of carrying the 
Protective Bill through the House of Commons ; at least without omitting 
the three first clauses ; and this would have broken up the Government 
in another and more disadvantageous way. 

' Two great errors were committed. The first in writing to your 
Excellency, without my knowledge and with views entirely at variance 
with those which I entertained, to urge the expediency of omitting the 
Meeting Clauses. This produced the letters from your Excellency to 
me, which, being laid before the Cabinet, as my duty required, produced 
a division there. This, however, was got over, and those who differed 
with me, on the sole ground of your Excellency's declaration that the 
re-enactment of the three clauses, which could only rest on necessity, 
were not essential to the safety of Ireland, having acquiesced, the Bill 
was brought in, and the difficulty seemed to be at an end. 

' But then came the effect of Mr. Littleton's inconceivable confidence 
in O'Connell, who, of course, seized the advantage which it gave him, 
and the inevitable consequences ensued. What is to be the result, I 
know not. Only one thing is certain — viz., that I, happen what may, 
never will return to office. The King wishes to bring about an union 
of Parties. This is simply and absolutely impossible. The only prac- 
ticable alternative that I can see is the formation of a Tory Administration, 
under the Duke of Wellington or Sir Robert Peel.' 

Grey to Brougham, November 4, 1834 : 

' My dear Chancellor, — . . . I have at all times disdained all sus- 
picion and belief, though these things had made my immediate retirement 
unavoidable, that they were intended to produce that result. Of such 
an intention, whatever share you might have had in the previous trans- 
actions, I entirely acquitted you, having in my possession what I consider 
as the strongest proof of your wish for my continuance in office.' 



THE GREY FAMILY 



sir Henry Grey, Bart., = Hannah, d. of Thos. 

of Howick, b. 1691 Wood of Fallodon, 

ob, 1750 ob. 1764 



Sir Henry Crrcy, Bart, 
of Howick 

/'. 1722 ; ob, 1808 

unmarried 



C'.EN. Sir (■|1.\rli;s Gkuv ok ]"aulodon, ist Earl Grey 
/). 1729 
ob. 1807 



Eli/abctli, rf. of George Grrcy 
of Southwick 
ob. 1822 



Henry Grey, Charles, 2nd I.skl Grkv. K.G. 

ob. June 1764 }, '|."allo(lonTnT?rT7ST 

06. 1845. Reform Bill IVeiiiiet 



Mary Elizal>etli 
b. 1776 m. 1794 
nb. 1 861 

d. of tlie 1 st Lord Ponsonby and 
niece of George Ponsonby, 
M.P. {ob. 1817), and sister of 
Hon. George Ponsonby, a Lord 
of the Treasury in Earl Grey's 
Cabinet 1830, also sister of 2nd 
Viscount Ponsonby, and of Sir 
William Ponsonby, killed at 
Waterloo 



Elizabeth 

b. 1705 
ob. 1840 



— Sam. Whithrea 
ALP. 
ob. 1815 
had issue 



Gen. Sir Henry George Grey, 

b. 176O 

o.s.p. 1845 



Sir George Grey of Fallodon =Mary, d. of Sam. 

b. 17O7 Whitbread ob. 1S5S 

ob. 1828 sister of Sam. Whit- 

I bread, M.P. 



Kt. Hon. Sir George Grky, 

Home Sec. 1846 el seq. 

ob. 1882 



Lt.-Col. George Henry Grey 
b. 1835 

ob. 1874 



Kt. Hon. Sir Ed. Grky, Bt., K.(i., 
now Viscount t>rcy 
and others 



Tliomas Grev 


Lt-.'Col. 


1 
Ivdward Grey 


Hannah 


(i) Capt Bettcsworth 


''• '77" 


\\illiam Crrey 


Bishop of 


Althea 


(2) Kt. Hon. E. 


ob. 1797 


''■ •77.> 


1 lereford 


(.. 1785 


Ellick, M.r. 


unmarried 


„6. 1817 


1,. 1782 




" Bear EUico," 




liad ish\ie 


ob. 1837. 16 Ch. 




Govt. Whip 



daughter, Louisa = John George Lambton, 
stillborn Elizabeth isT Earl of Durham 

1795 I). 1797 ob. 1840 



GiiORf.E, 2NU Earl Di'rham 
and other issur 



Elizabetli ^ John Croker Bulteel Caroline = Hon. G. Banington, K.N. 
fc. 1798 b. lygq Ld. of the Admiralty, 

had issue Nov. 18^0 

i 
Mary = Sir Algernon West 



Georgiana 
b. i8qi 
ob. 1900 
unmarried 



Henry, jrd Earl Grky, K.G. ^ Maria Copley 
/). 1802 ob. 1879 

o.s.p. 1894 



Gen. Charles Grey ■■ 
b. 1804 
ub. 1870 



Caroline 

Eliza 

Farquhar 



Admiral 

Sir Fred. Wul Gri 
R.N. b. 1805 
o.s.p. 1878 



Uarbarina 
Charlotte 
Sullivan 



Mary Grey - Sir Charlbs Wood, William 

b. 1807 j 1ST Vis. Halifax b. 1808 

ob. 1815 

Cha9., 2ud Vis. iioliiax 



Albert Henry George, 

4TH Earl Grey, G.C.B., 

(Governor General of 

Canada, ob. 1917 



Admiral 
George (hey 
b. 1809 
had issue 



Charles Robert, 5T11 Earlc;rey 



Thos. Rev. - Lady Rev. 

b. 1810 John Georgiana Francis 

ob. 1826 Grey Hervey Grey 

6. 1812 b. 1813 

had issue -- Lady 

Eliz. 

Ilowaid 



Henry Cavendish William 
b. 1814 George 

ob. unmarried b. 1819 



INDEX 



Aberdeen, 4th Earl of (afterwards 
Premier), 174, 225 and note, 

236, 353-4» 356, 389 
Acre, St, Jean d', 380 
Adair, Robert (Sir), 108, 229, 

352, 354; Fox's letters to, 61- 

62 ; Grey's letters to, 229, 364 
Adam, William, M.P., 65 
Adam Smith, 14 
Addington (rst Viscount Sidmouth, 

in 1805), 15, 138, 146; his 

Ministry, 122-8, 130-6; in 

All the Talents, 142-4 
Adelaide, Queen of William IV, 

277, 320I1, 386 
Adkin, Thomas, 9-10 
Albany, the, 213 
Albemarle, Earl of, 248 
Alexander, Czar, 140 
Alexander, spy, 84-5 
Algiers, 356 
All the Talents, Ministry of (1806- 

1807), 142-59, 169, 183 
Allen, of Holland House, 25, 385 
Aln, river, 191 
Alnmouth, 3, 109 note, 191 
Alnwick, 121, 162, 196, 200, 222, 

358 
Althorp, Lord, John Charles Spen- 
cer, became 3rd Earl Spencer 
and retired Nov. 1834 (died 
1845), 163, 167, 176; opposes 
junction with Canning, 204, 
207 ; chosen leader of Whigs 
in Commons, 213 ; in crises of 



Nov. 1830, 234, 242-4, 247-8 ; 
budget failure, 256; part in 
Reform Bill, 240 note, 263-4, 
268, 271, 275 note, 276, 294, 
298, 314, 326-8, 381 ; conducts 
Bill in House, 302-3 ; Peer- 
making controversy, 331, 333-5 ; 
in ' Days of May,' 342-3, 347 ; 
relations with Grey, 213-5, ^4-3 > 
364; after Reform Bill, 356-7, 
363—4, 392 ; retires finally, 366 
note; character of, 213-5, 252, 
257> 303» 333» 367 note 
America, South, 152,177, 204, 374 
America (U.S.), 72, 204, 265, 

368, 374 
Amiens, Peace of, 118, 127-31 
Andre, Major, 8 
Anglesey, Marquis of, 241 note, 

249-250, 299, 388 
Anne, Queen, 264 
Anti-'J acobin, the, 107 
Appleby, representation of, 162 
Arnold, Dr., of Rugby, 262 note 
Arta-Volo boundary, the, 229-30 
Ashley, Lord, see Shaftesbury, 7th 

Earl 
Attwood, Thomas, founds Bir- 
mingham Pohtical Union, 216, 
268 note ; prepares resistance 
to Belgian War, 235; sup- 
ports Reform Bill, 286-7, 3H> 
326-7 ; his plans in the ' Days 
of May,' 220, 340, 342, 344-7» 
349 



393 



394 



INDEX 



Auckland, Lord, William Eden 

(died 1 8 14), 36, 49, 144 
Auckland, Earl, George Eden (died 

1849), 247, 249 
Austen, Miss Jane, 112 note, 118, 

290 
Austerlitz, 140-1, 150 
Austria, 57, 68-72, 139-41, 166 ; 

Grey's views on, 68, 173, 176 ; 

Belgian question (1830—4), 224, 

259' 353 



Bagehot, 269 

Baird, Sir David, General, 152 
Bamborough, duel at, 200 
Baring, Alexander, M.P. (after- 
wards Lord Asliburton), 343 
Baring, Francis (afterwards Lord 

Northbrook), 248 

Barre, Colonel, 12 

Barrington, Capt. the Hon. George 

(husband of Lady Caroline Grey, 

daughter of Premier), 246, 248 

Bartholomew, St., Massacre of, 

58, 123 
Bastille, the, 15 note, 31, 33 
Bath Political Union, 324 
Beaumont, Thomas Richard (M.P. 
for Northumberland, 1 807), 

161, 199 note 

Beaumont, Thomas Wentworth, 

M.P., 199-200, 298 
Beaumont, Wentworth, M.P. (son 

of above), 199 note 
Bedford, Francis Russell, 5th Duke 

of (died 1802), 49, 88 note, 

100, 105, 127 
Bedford, Johji Russell, 6th Duke 

of (died 1839), 113, 144, 156, 

162, 302 ; correspondence with 
Grey, 302 and note 

Belgium (or the Netherlands), 63, 
68-9; Revolution in (1830), 



224-7, 259, 352; British 
opinion on, 235; attitude of 
Wellington to, 225 note, 235, 
390 ; Grey's policy re (1830-4), 
68, 224-7, 235, 259-60, 304, 
352-5, 390 

Bell, M.P., 199, 298 

Bentley, 8 

Beresfords, the, 113 

Bergami, 196 

Bewick, Thomas, 118 

Bigge, Thomas (Grey's letter to), 
103-4 

Birmingham, Riots (1791), 31, 35- 
36, 42, 65, 66 note, 289 ; 
Political Union (1830-2), 216, 
286-7, 314, 321, 324-7; dur- 
ing ' Days of May,' 340, 345-6 

Blackstone, Judge, 47 

Blake, William, 39 

Blucher, General, 70 

Botany Bay, 79, 84, 91, 117 i, 

Boulogne, camp at, 131, 133, 139 | 

Bourbons (restoration of the). 
Grey's attitude to, 173, 175-6, 

189, 371 i 

Braxfield, Lord, 79, 85 I 

Brereton, Colonel, 322 I 

Bright, John, 27, 250, 261, 272 " 
Brighton (Pavilion), 192 note, 276, 

278, 321, 386 
Bristol riots (1831), 252, 321-3, 

324 note 
Brooks's Club, 11, 14-15, 43, 106, 
137, 166, 177, 195, 202, 207, 
211, 236, 242, 244-5, 343 ; 
betting-book of, 88, 106, 146 
note 
Brougham, Henry Peter (1830, 
Baron Brougham and Vaux), 
80, 118, 299; character and 
genius of, 190-1, 213 ; relations 
to Grey, 189-91, 207, 221, 
223, 256-7, 366, 392 ; Queen's 
trial, 190, 192-7; supports 



Canning Ministry, 201, 207-8 ; 
Yorkshire election, 219, 221 ; 
wishes Turk out of Europe, 
228 note ; Reform motion (Nov. 
1830), _ 234, 239-40, 242; 
negotiations ending in Chancel- 
lorship, 240-5, 247, 378-9 ; 
relations with Times, 256—7 ; 
part in Reform Bill, 263, 271, 
274, 349 note; opposes total 
abolition of rotten boroughs, 239, 
263, 274-6, 275 note, 381 ; at 
dissolution crisis of 1 83 1, 294-5, 
383—4; 'supplicates' Lords, 
308-9 ; urges Peer-making, 331, 
333, 386; in' Days of May,' 339 
and note, 340 note, 348-9, 388, 
390; in 1834, 364 note, 365-6, 
392 ; Grey's letters to, 377, 388, 

392 
Brougham, Mrs., 193 note 
Brown, Mr., entertains Duke of 

Sussex, 197 
Brown, P. A., cited, 97 note 
Brunswick, Duke of, 57—9, 68, 

Buckingham, ist Marquis of 
(George Grenville), died 1813, 
brother of Lord Grenville, 36, 
131, 134 note, 144, 145 

Bucks, during ' Days of May,' 345 

Buenos Ayres, 152 

BuUer, Charles, 213, 325 note 

Buonaparte, see Napoleon 

Burdett, Sir Francis, 169, 188, 
270 note, 281 ; his view of 
Grey, 184; supports Reform 
Bill, 286, 292, 318-19 ; Grey's 
letters to, 292, 385-6 

Burke, Edmund (died 1797), vio- 
lence on Regency, 20, 23-4 ; 
and on Hastings, 24-6 ; opposes 
war with Russia, 26-7 ; splen- 
dour and limitations of his 
genius, 24-5, 30, 117; on 



INDEX 395 

French Revolution, 33-4, 37-8, 
43j 5i» 54-5. 57, 62, 64, 
69, 72, 119; on Ireland, 113; 
otherwise mentioned, 12, 102, 
180, 190-1, 198, 268, 272 

Burke, William, murderer, 323 
note 

Burlington House, 49, 67 

Bums, Robert, 79 

Butler, J. R. M., author of Passing 
of the Great Reform Bill, cited, 
5, 261, 299 

Byron, Lord, 16, 24, 118, 149, 
228, 245 



Calcutta, Black Hole of, 280 
Calder, Admiral, 139 
Calne, 253, 267 note, 329 note 
Cambridge University, 8-10, 14, 

197, 289, 291, 301 and note 
Cambridgeshire bye-election, ^30, 

Campbell, John, ist Baron (died 
1 861), 208 note, 213 note, 282, 
308-10, 384 
Canada, 186, 367 and note 
Canning, George, 4, 6, 118, 125, 
171, 197 note ; Grey's views on, 
123, 170-1, 201-8, 352, 374-5 : 
why more popular than Whigs 
(1827), 182, 202 ; opposition to 
Reform, 198, 201-3 ; foreign 
policy, 198, 201-2, 204, 229, 
374; Ministry of, 201-8 
Canningites, see under Huskisson, 
Palmerston, Melbourne, Grant, 
Goderich 
Cape of Good Hope, 147, 152 
Carlile, Radical journalist, 254 
Carlisle, 5 th Earl of, Frederick 

Howard (died 1825), 134 
Carlisle, 6th Earl of, George 
Howard, died 1848 (Lord Mor- 
peth till 1825), 151, 247 



396 



INDEX 



Carlton House, residence of Prince 
of Wales, 17, 18, 20, 29, 89, 

I54» 177-9 
Carlyle, Thomas, 233, 325 note 
Carnarvon, Lord, 379 
Caroline of Brunswick, Princess of 

Wales (died 1 821), 154-5, 

191-7,215, 265 
Cartwright, Major, reformer, 20, 

32, 39' 77. 93.-4 
Castlereagh, Viscount (became 
Marquis of Londonderry 182 1, 
died 1822),! 19, 1 80- 1 and note, 
198, 223 and note, 251, 254-5, 

351,374 

Catherine, Empress of Russia, 1 94 

Catholic Emancipation, 33 ; op- 
posed by George III, 14, 99, 
114, 122; Pitt, Addington, and 
George III, 122-4, I55""7; 
opposed by English opinion, 123 
and note, 160 ; opposed by 
George IV, 123, 178; sup- 
ported by Whigs and Grenville, 
132, 138; All the Talents 
Ministry, 142-3, 155-8 ; Grey's 
views on, 123, 138, 170-1, 177- 
178, 212, 292, 371, 374-5 ; 
prospects of (1807-29), 177-8, 
201, 203 ; passed (1829), 206 
note, 208-212, 341 note; its 
ghost ranges for revenge, 210, 
219, 239 

Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 106 note 

Cavendish, Lord George, 113 

Cavendish, Lord John, 21 

Cavendishes, the, 98, 105-6; and 
see Devonshire, Dukes of 

Chandos Clause, 288 and note 

Charles I, 278 

Charles II, 78, 296 

Charles X of France, 219 

Charlotte, Princess, daughter of 
George IV (died 18 17), 179, 
352 



Chatham, Earl of, first William 

Pitt, 15, 47, 78 
Chaucer, 3, 98, loi 
Chelsea, 291 
Cheviots, the, i 

Chillingham, Northumberland, 223 
Cholera (183 1-2), 322 and note 
Church clergy, politics of, 34-5, 

289-91, 301 note, 307-8, 316- 

.317 

Cintra, Convention of, 210 

Clare, Fitz gibbon. Lord, 114 

Clarke, Mrs., 166-8 

Clarkson, 159 

Cobbett, William, 118, 137, 163, 
216-17, 290 note, 303 ; action 
on Reform, 216-17, 285-6, 
329, 341 ; prosecuted by Whigs, 
254-5, 285-6 ; opinion of Grey 
(1830,286 

Cochrane, Lord, 118 

Cockbum, Henry (Lord), 79, 248, 

274» 345 
Coke of Norfolk, 20, 28, 31, 118, 

214, 386 
Coleridge, S. T., 30, 81 note, 103, 

118 
Colne in Lancashire, 323 
Combination Acts, see under Trade 

Unions 
Commercial Treaty with France 

(1787), 14-15 
Coningsby, Lord Monmouth, 

original of, 153, 268 note 
Constable, John, 118 
Copenhagen, 152 

Copenhagen Fields, meeting at, 90 
Copley, see Ljiidhurst, Lord 
Com Laws, 200, 216, 272, 288-9, 

341 note, 342 ; Grey's views on, 

200, 205 note, 289 
Cornwall, representation of, 74-5 
Corresponding Society, the London, 

39, 41 ; founded, 45-6, 63, 69, 
82 ; suppressed, 90-3 



INDEX 



Coulson, Colonel, 298 
Courtenay (later Earl Devon), 383 
Cranke, Mr., 8 note 
Creevey, Thomas, M.P., cited, 23, 

163, 190, 255, 257-8 note, 

258, 268 note, 338-9 note, 

367-8 
Crimean War, 27, 355 
Croker, John Wilson, 19 note, 209, 

223 note, 279, 288, 329 and 

note, 332, 347, 383-4 
Cromwell, Oliver, 30, 364 
Cruikshank, 192, 287, 339 note 
Cumberland, election (183 1), 298 
Cumberland, Ernest Augustus, 

Duke of (son of George III), 

167 and note, 210, 377, 388 
Cumberland, Henry, Duke of, 10 
Cuthbert, Saint, 2 



Danton, 71 

Dardanelles, the, 152 

' Delicate Investigation,' the, 1 54- 

5» 191 
Demosthenes, 107 

D'Enghien, Due, 139 

Denman, Sir Thomas, 248, 254 

Derby, county meeting (1795), 93 

de Roos, Lord, 336 

De Vear, 318 

Devizes, 320, 323 

Devonport, 1 84 note 

Devonshire, 5th Duke of (died 

1811), 52, 106 
Devonshire, 6th Duke of (died 

1858), 207 note, 223 note, 248, 

380 
Devonshire, Georgiana, Duchess 

of, 20-1, 30, 106 
Devonshire House, n, 13 
Dickens, Charles, 287 
Disraeli, 228, 269 ; see also 

Coningsby 
Dissenters, politics of, 31, 33-7? 



397 

during 



42, 100, 203, 209 ; 
Reform Bill, 289-91 
Dorset bye-election, 330, 385 
Dorsetshire labourers, 362 note 
Doyle, John, see ' H. B.' 
Dumourier, General, 57 
Duncannon, Lord (John Ponson- 
by, aftervs^ards 4th Earl Bess- 
borough), 246, 248, 262, 273, 
292, 380, 382 ; letter to Dur- 
ham, 301 note 
Dundas, Admiral Hon. G., 248 
Dundas, Henry, ist Viscount Mel- 
ville, 78, 87, 100, 138, 167 
Dundee, 65 

Dunstanborough Castle, 2-3, no 
Durham, County, 63, 199, 200 
Durham, ist Earl, see Lambton, 

John George 
Durham, Lady, see Grey, Lady 
Louisa 



East Retford, 209 
EatanswiU election, 200 
Ebrington, Lord, M.P., 314 
Edinburgh, 80, 274, 365-6 
Edinburgh Review, the, 80, 172, 

245, 248, 252, 274, 282 
Egerton, Lord Ellesmere (died 

1617), 157 
Elba, 175 
Eldon, Lord (Sir John Scott), 39, 

84-5, 118, 119, 201, 206, 210, 

219, 383 

EUenborough, ist Baron, Edward 
Law (died 1818), 144 

EUenborough, ist Earl, Edward, 
son of ist Baron (died 1 871), 
218 note, 338 note, 378 

EUice, Edward ('Bear' EUice), 
221 note, 222 and note, 223, 
242 note, 246, 248, 264, 384 

Elliot, Ebenezer, 80 

Elliot, Sir Gilbert, 50, 52, 65, 67 



398 



INDEX 



Ellis, Hon. G. Agar, 248 

Ellis, T. Flower, 291 

Erskine, Thomas (created Baron 
1806, died 1823), 47, 51, 61 ; 
saves the Reformers as their 
advocate, 83-8 ; supports Ad- 
dington, 1 27 ; Chancellor in 
Ministry of All the Talents, 
144, 157-8 

Eton, 4-10 

Exeter, 281 note; Bishop of {see 
Phillpotts 

Eyre, Justice, 8 5 



Factory Act (1833), 351, 360-2 

Fallodon, Northumberland, 3, 8 
note, 162 

Fawkes, Guy, Tom Paine as, 63 ; 
Bishop as, 316 

Fenwick of Longwitton, 380 

Fitz Clarences, the, 320 

FitzHerbert, Mrs., 17-22, 191 
and note 

Fitzpatrick, Walter (editor oi Drop- 
more Papers, Hist. MS. Com- 
mission), cited, 135 note, 140 
note, 150 note 

Fitzpatrick, General, 25 note, 88, 
107, 144 

Fitzwiiliam, 2nd Earl, 52, 62, 106, 
i34» I44» 223 note 

Fox Dinners, 163 

Fox, Charles James (son of ist 
Lord Holland, 1 749-1 806), 
faE from power (Dec. 1783), 
13 ; factious character of early 
opposition to Pitt, 14—16, 20 ; 
Mrs. FitzHerbert, 1 8-20, 22-3 ; 
Regency question, 17, 20-4 ; 
Hastings' trial, 2 5-6 ; Fox's 
doctrine on Russia and Turkey, 
26-7, 227-8, 355 

His views at outbreak of 
French Revolution, 31 ; advo- 



cates religious equality, 31, 33 ; 
defends Reformers (1792), 32, 
43-4, 48 ; relations to ' Friends 
of People,' 43—5 ; gradual breach 
with Portland Whigs, 49-51, 
53—6, 61-2, 65-7 ; views on 
French Revolution (1792), 57— 
58 ; on King's execution, 71 ; 
on war of 1793, 69-72 

Continues to advocate Reform 
(1793-7), 76 ; and to defend 
Reformers, 78—9, 91 ; opposes 
' gagging Acts,' 91,93; supports 
Grey's Reform Bill of 1797, 
95-7, 105 ; secedes, 96-8, 10 1, 
104, 113 ; cut off Privy Coun- 
cil, 105 ; liberal views on 
Ireland, 113, 138 

Social, domestic, and literary 
life in retirement, 101-2, 105-8, 
115 note 

Last period (i 801-6), 121, 
125; fosters alliance with Gren- 
villes, 127-8, 1 3 1-7; criticises 
renewal of war (1803), 130-1 ;* 
excluded from office by King, 
136-7; criticises Pitt's conduct 
of war, 140— I ; last Ministry 
(Feb. to Sept. 1806), 141-9 ; 
presses Slave Trade abolition, 
143, 147, 158; firm foreign 
policy against Napoleon, 147—8, 
1 50 ; views on Napoleon at 
different times, 73, 128-9, 147— 
148 ; death of, 142, 148-9, 
153, 160; Gibbon on, 51, 66; 
Wordsworth on, 142, 148 

Letters from Grey, 89 note, 
102, io4note. Ill, 126-9, 134— 
5, 140 ; letters to Grey, 73, 102, 
104 note, 112, 127 note, 128-9, 
133—5, 141 5 early relations with 
Grey, 11-13, 23, 43-4, 48, 53 ; 
personal relations with Grey 
(after 1797), 102, 104, 107-8, 



INDEX 



399 



III-I2, 131, 136, 230; letters 
to and from Portland, 56, 65-6 ; 
letters to Holland, 57-8, 131 ; 
letter to Lauderdale, 138; letters 
to Adair, 61-2 

His life's work, completed by 
Grey, 29, 107, 148-9, 180-1, 

230-1. 368 

Otherwise mentioned, 36, 47, 
64, 117, 177-8, 352 

Foz, Mrs. (formerly Mrs. Armit- 
stead), 100, 128, 146 

Francis, Philip, 24, 44, 107 

Franklin, Benjamin, 7 

* Friends of the People ' Society, 
9, 32, 54; founded, 43-50; 
report on Parliamentary repre- 
sentation, 60-1, 73-5, 76 note, 
266 ; last meeting, 94 ; posthu- 
mous references to, 45, 126, 309 

Frome Political Union, 324 note 



Gallipoli, 228 

Game Laws, 89-90 

Gardiner, Bishop, temp. Mary I, 

336 

Garrick, 7 

Gascoyne, General, amendment, 
294, 329 

Gatton, constituency of, 274 

George III, Regency question, 17, 
20, 23 ; question of Foxite 
Whigs taking office, 56, 132, 
136-7, 142, 178 ; protects slave 
trade, 14, 55 ; attack on his 
coach, 91—2 ; opposes Catholic 
emancipation, 14, 99, 122, 155- 
157 ; madness of, 20, 23, 122-3, 
137 ; relations to All the Talents, 
142-3, 146, 155-9; death of, 
192; otherwise mentioned, 12 
note, 13-14, 30, 32, 40, 64, 
93» "7, 197. 360, 390 

George (IV) Prince of Wales, 11, 



1 3 ; affair of Mrs. Fitzherbert, 
17-24, 191 and note; turns 
against Catholic claims, 123, 
138, 153; unstable support of 
Whigs, 137, 153-5; Regent, 
III, 177—9 ' relations to second 
wife, 154-5, i79» 1 9 1-7 ; King 
George IV (1820-30), 192, 
197, 206, 212, 218 and note; 
death of, 212, 217; unfriendly 
relations with Grey, 89, 153-5, 

177-9' i97» 212 

George V, King, 40 

Gerald, Scottish Reformer, 79 
note, 80 

Germany {see also Prussia, Austria, 
and Hanover), 52, 128, 174, 
351.368 

Gibbon, 7, 8, 51-2, 66, 124 

Gillray, 40, 64, 102, 339 note 

Girondins, the, 56, 69, 284 

Gisbume Park, 323 

Gladstone, 123 note, 272, 300, 
306-8, 357,368 

Glanville, 96 

Goderich, Viscount, Premier 
(1828), 206, 207 note, 379 ; in 
Grey's Cabinet, 247, 359 

Graham, Sir James, attaches him- 
self to Whigs, 221 and note, 222, 
234, 239 ; in Reform Cabinet, 
247, 248, 331, 333; serves on 
Reform Bill Committee, 262-3, 
380-2; Irish policy, 357, 
362—3 ; resigns, 362-3 ; other- 
wise mentioned, 298 

Grant, Charles (1835, Lord 
Glenelg), 201 note, 209, 222, 

247, 331. 384 
Granville, Lord, 352-3 
Grasmere, 262 note 
Grattan, 138, 156 
Greece, 27, 227-30, 355; Grey 

secures her better frontiers, 

229-30 



400 



INDEX 



Grenville, Lord (died 1834), Pitt's 
colleague, 36, 64-5, 67, 92 ; 
opposes Addington, 125; leads 
war party (1802-3), 128-9; 
character of, 13 1-2, 137; tries 
to unite parties, 13 1-7; fusion 
with Foxites, 135-8, 140-1 ; 
All the Talents Ministry, 142-5, 
147,149-50, 153, i58-9> 169; 
with Whigs in Opposition (1807 
-1 8 1 7), 160, 165-6, 168, 170, 
172-4, 177, 182-3 
Grenville, Hon. Thomas, brother 
of Lord Grenville and of Mar- 
quis of Buckingham, 133, 140- 
141, 144 
Gretna Green, 186 
Greville, 336 note 
Grey, Albert, 4th Earl, Governor- 
General of Canada (died 1 9 1 7), 8 
Grey, Lady Caroline, daughter of 
Premier, wife of Capt. Hon. G. 
Barrington (j.^.), 223 note ; 
Lady Grey's letters to, 223 note, 
234 note, 300, 335-6, 358, 366 
Grey, General Sir Charles, ist 
Earl Grey, father of Premier, 
2, 7-8, II, 12, 146, 162 
Grey, Charles, 2nd Earl, Reform 
Bill Premier (i 764-1 845). — 
Birth and parentage, 1-3 ; child- 
hood, 3-4 ; Eton, 4-6, 9 ; 
Trinity, Cambridge, 8-10 ; 
grand tour, 10- 11 ; early years 
in politics and society, 11-13, 
16 ; maiden speech (1787), 14- 
1 5 ; Mrs. Fitzherbert episode, 
17-23; Hastings' trial, 24-6; 
Ocksakow, 26-7 

Effect of French Revolution 
on, 33 ; denounces Birmingham 
riots, 36 ; founds ' Friends of 
People' (1792% 43-7> 50; 
his Reform motions (1792-3), 
47-8, 75-6, 306; draws Fox 



after him into Reform camp, 
43-5> 48-55* 57, 61-2, 66-7 ; 
views on Poland and coalition 
against France, 58—9, 68-70; 
French revue on, 64 ; denounces 
Pitt's alarmist policy, 66 note ; 
defends persecuted Reformers, 
78, 80, 82-8 ; opposes large 
grant to Prince of Wales, 89 ; 
opposes gagging Acts, 91-3 ; 
motion for Reform Bill (1797), 

94-6 

Secedes from Parliament 
(1797-1801), 94, 98-101, 104, 
113, 121 ; attends on Irish 
questions, 11 3-1 5; pronounce- 
ment on Reform (1802), 121 
note ; supports Catholic emanci- 
pation is-v.), 123-4, 138 ; on 
Addington Ministry, 124; bad 
terms with Sheridan, 23, 125-7 ; 
refuses office under Addington, 
127; follows Fox hesitatingly 
into Grenville alliance, 127-8, 
1 3 1-7 ; thinks Fox too opti- 
mistic about Napoleon, 128-9; 
criticises renewal of war, 130; 
refuses office without Fox, 136 ; 
doubts on Third Coalition, 140 

Ministry of All the Talents 
(Feb. 1806 to March 1807), 
J142-59 ; Reform question, 142, 
169; Catholic question, 142—3, 
1 5 5—8 ; conduct towards his 
colleagues, 143-5 5 First Lord, 
Admiralty (Feb. to Sept. 1806), 
144-5 5 ^is father's Peerage and 
Earldom, 145—6 ; his own title 
Lord Howick, April 1806 to 
Nov. 1807, 145, 162; Foreign 
Minister after Fox's death, Sept. 
1806 to March 1807, 149-52 ; 
coldness to Prince of Wales, 
153-5; and Princess, 155; 
favours resignation of Ministers, 



INDEX 



401 



1 56-8 ; part in slave trade 
abolition, 147, 158-9 

Opposition (1807-15) loses 
seat for Northumberland, 160- 
162 ; becomes Earl Grey on his 
father's death, 163 ; disadvant- 
ages of his being in Lords, 162— 
165; too inactive for leader of 
Opposition, 1 64, 1 84 ; relations 
toWhitbread,i45, i65-6;mode- 
rate views on Mrs. Clarke ques- 
tion, 165-8 ; hostile to Radicals, 
168-9 ' declaration on Reform 
(18 10), 169-70; views on 
Catholic emancipation, 170-1 ; 
views on different stages of 
Peninsular War, 17 1-3 ; on 
war and peace (1813-15), 173- 
176 ; unsuited to conduct of 
war, 176-7 ; refuses office three 
times (1809-12), 177-8; dis- 
like of Prince Regent, 178-9 

Opposition (1816-30), 180- 
240 ; opposes renewed persecu- 
tion of Radicals, 182, 187-9; 
but dislikes Radicals, 188-9; 
desires large Parliamentary Re- 
form (1820), 182-3, 24°j 37i~ 
373; ill-health, 184; happy 
home life, 185 ; relations to J. 
G. Lambton (f.z'.), 186-8; to 
Wilson, 189 ; views on Bourbons 
and Napoleon, 189; relations to 
Brougham, 190— i ; Queen's 
trial, 1 9 1-7 ; his reception in 
Northumberland (1820), 196- 
197 ; Northumberland election, 
(1826), 199-200 ; isolation dur- 
ing Canning Ministry and after, 
207-8 ; his views on Canning, 
201-8, 373—5 ; gradual resump- 
tion of leadership, 297-8, 
211-13, 218, 220-1, 376-8; 
Althorp his lieutenant, 213-14 ; 
Reform question again, 215, 



220-4; the new reign (1830), 
217-18; General Election, 219 ; 
views on Belgian question, 224- 
227 ; on Turkish question, 227- 
230 ; extends boundaries of 
Greece, 229—30 ; goes up for 
new Parliament, 230-3 ; attacks 
Wellington on King's speech, 
234-6 ; views on Reform, 237, 
239-40 

Forms Government (Nov. 
1830), 240-51, 378-80; the 
last peasants' revolt, 252—3 ; 
prosecution of Cobbett, 255 ; 
failure to retrench, 255-6 ; rela- 
tions with Brougham, 242-5, 
256-7; nerve and serenity in 
office, 257 ; success of foreign 
policy, 258-60 

Originator of Reform Bill, 
261, 264, 307 ; appoints ad- 
vanced Reformers to draw up 
the Bill, 262-3, 380-1 ; rela- 
tions to Durham, 263 and note ; 
his part in drawing up Bill, 264- 
265, 270—4 ; induces Cabinet to 
accept it, 274-6 ; and King, 
276-9 ; need for secrecy, 275 ; 
Tories deceived as to his views, 
231, 240, 268 note, 279, 283-4 ; 
Grey and the ghost, 284 

Pleased at reception of Bill, 
284-5, 288, 313 ; value of his 
long abstention from office, 211, 
286 ; dislikes O 'Conn ell, 292 ; 
induces King to dissolve (April 
1 831), 293-6, 382-4; wins 
new constitutional position at 
General Election, 297-300 ; 
Garter, 300 ; refuses to modify 
Bill, 301-2 ; admits Russell and 
Stanley to Cabinet, 302 ; dis- 
tress about Durham, 304-6, 
359; loses Bill in Lords (Oct. 
183 1 ), 306-10 



402 



INDEX 



Firm stand at crisis for no 
less efficient Bill,' 312-15 ; mis- 
understood by Place's deputa- 
tion, 318-19; difficulties with 
King, 320-1 ; Proclamation 
about Political Unions (Nov. 
1831), 325-7; negotiation with 
WhamcliiFe, 327-9; popularity 
of new Bill (Dec. 1831), 329-30 

Urged to make Peers, 324, 
330-1 ; brought round to the 
policy, 331, 385-6 ; gets King's 
promise (Jan. 1832), 331-3, 
386—7 ; resists Cabinet pressure 
to force premature crisis (March 
1832), 333-5 ; passes second 
reading in Lords, 3 3 5-6 ; uneasy 
about the King, 388; resigns 
on defeat on procedure in 
Lords, 338-9, 388; attitude 
durmg ' Days of May,' 340-3, 
347, 389 ; extracts King's guar- 
antee, 348 ; passes Bill, 349 

Conduct of Belgian crisis, 
259-60, 304, 352-4» 390; 
later views on Russia, 3 5 5-6 ; 
dealings with Spain and Portugal, 
356-7 ; victorious General Elec- 
tion (Dec. 1832), 358 ; domestic 
legislation (1833-4), 351, 360- 
2; slavery abolished, 351, 359- 
3605 failure in Ireland, 357, 
362-4, 391-2 ; resignation, 362- 
364, 392; Scottish tour (1834), 
365-6 ; last years at Howick 
(1834-5), 366-8 

Marriage (i794)» 83, 86, 89 ; 
home, social, and literary life, 
101-3, 106-13, 184-6, 220-3, 
230-1, 358, 366-8 {see also 
under Howick) ; London resi- 
dences : Hanover Square, 284 ; 
Berkeley Square, 244 note; 
Downing Street, 304 note 
(183 1-4, also for a few months. 



1806-7); suburban house at 
East Sheen, 304 note ; at Devon- 
port (1823-5), 184 note 

Cobbett on, 285-6; Gibbon 
on, 51; Burdett on, 1 84 ; 
Sydney Smith on, 160; 
Macaulay on, i, 16 note; 
Creevey on, 367-8 ; Spencer 
Walpole on, 350 

His life's work, 29, 119-20, 
180-1, 230-1, 350-1, 368-9 

For Grey's correspondence 
quoted in this volume see 
sub-headings under Adair ; 
Bigge; Bedford, 6th Duke 
of; Brougham; Burdett; Fox; 
Grey, Chas. ; Grey, Lady ; 
Holland, Lord and Lady ; 
Howick, Lord ; Jeffrey ; Lans- 
downe, 3rd Marquis; Lambton, 
J. G, ; Leopold ; Ponsonby, 
George ; Ponsonby, Mrs. ; 
Stanley ; Tiemey ; Wellesley ; 
WiUiam IV 

Grey (General), Charles, second 
son of Premier, 108 ; Grey's 
letters to, 200, 205 

Grey family (early history of), 2 

Grey, Francis, Rev., 162 

Grey, Lady Georgiana, Grey's 
daughter, 112 note, 223, 284 
note, 367 

Grey, Sir Henry, of Howick, 
uncle of Premier, 2, 12, 108-9, 
164 note 

Grey, Lady Louisa, daughter of 
Premier, wife of ist Earl Dur- 
ham, 186, 275-6, 304, 306, 

363, 376 
Grey, Lady (Mary Elizabeth Pon- 
sonby), wife of Premier (1776- 
1861), 83, 86, 89, 107-13, 
184, 207 note, 221, 366, 368 ; 
Grey's letters to, 83-5, 98, 
loi note, 103, 107-8, no. 



INDEX 



112, 127, I30-I, 136-8, 163 

note, 165-8, 178-9, 193-6 
(Queen's trial), (Reform Bill) 
263, 278 ; her letters, 185, 197 
note, 376-7 ; her letters to 
Lady Caroline, 223 note, 234 
note, 300, 335-6, 358, 366 

Grote, George, 318-9 

Gunning, of Cambridge, 9, 267 
note 



Habeas Corpus, suspensions of: 
by Pitt, 81, 89, 99; by his 
successors, 181, 187 note 

Halifax Political Union, 344 

Halifax, ist Viscount, see Wood, 
Charles 

Halifax, Charles Wood, 2nd Vis- 
count, grandson of Grey, 115 
note 

Hamburg, 151 

Hammond, Mr. and Mrs., cited, 
181 note, 252 note, 290 note, 
346 note 

Hampden, 30 

Hanover, 147, 150— i 

Hardinge, Sir Henry, Tory M.P. 
(Gov.-Gen., India,i844-7),384 

Hardy, Admiral Sir T., 248 

Hardy, Thomas, founder of Cor- 
responding Society, 32, 39, 
41-2, 45-6, 63, 74, 168; 
trial of, 81-7, 90-1 

Hare, James, M.P., 108 

Hare, William, criminal, 323 note 

Harrow, 5 

Hastings, Warren, trial of, 24-6, 
84 

' H. B.,' caricaturist (John Doyle), 
16, 339 and note; see also List 
of Illustrations 

Heron, Sir Robert, cited, 288 note, 

Hertford, Marchioness of (died 



403 

1836), mother of 3rd Marquis, 
153-4 

Hertford, 3rd Marquis of (Lord 
Yarmouth until 1822; died 
1842), 153-4, 178, 268 note, 
279, 329 

Heytesbury, Lord, 230 note 

Hill, General Lord, 340 

Hobhouse, John Cam (Lord 
Broughton, author of Recollec- 
tions of a Long Life), 87, 188, 
236, 247, 270 note, 280-r, 318, 

333 
Holcroft, Radical, cited, 63 note, 8 1 
Holkam (Coke's house), 20, 30, 107 
Holland, 52, 67-9, 128, 152, 166 ; 

Belgian question (1830-4), 224, 

235. 304* 352-4. 390 

Holland, Lady (formerly Lady 
Webster), 45, 127 note, 281 
note, 296 ; early views on Grey's 
character, 12, 105 ; Grey's 
letters to, 175, 185 note 

Holland, 3rd Lord, Henry Vassal! 
Fox, cited, 26, 43, 146-7, 157, 
163 ; C.J. Fox's letters to, 57-8, 
131; Grey's letters to, 104 note, 
154-5. 167, 169,170-5,179-80, 
183 note, 184-5, 221, 227-9, 
234 note, 241 note, 243-4, 253; 
note, 259,260, 263, 371-5, 379 , 
(Reform Bill period), 296-7, 
300 note, 306, 342, 385-90; 
(after Reform Bill), 355-6, 358 
note 

Letters to Grey, 229 note, 
387-9 ; letters to Durham, 302 
In Ministry of All the Talents, 
144, 149, 153 ; opposition again, 
165, 1 7 1-5 ; views on Penin- 
sula, 1 7 1-2 ; breach with Grey 
about Canning (1827-8), 201-2, 
207; renewed alliance, 221; 
foreign policy, views on, 225, 
227-9 



404 



INDEX 



Part in formation of Grey 
Ministry, 240, 241 note, 243, 
247, 379 ; part in controversies 
on Peer-making, 304» 33i» 333» 
386-8 ; in ' Days of May,' 342, 
347, 388-90; invites Grey 
back (1835), 366 note; other- 
wise mentioned, 83, 99, 104—6, 

III, I49» 310, 349 note 

Holland House, Kensington, 112, 
166, 175, 204, 236, 241 

Holland Rose, Professor, cited, 
26, 97, 140 note 

Holt, Daniel, Reform martyr, 77 

Holy Alliance, the, 118, 219, 224, 
226, 374 

Hone, William (unsuccessfully 
prosecuted, 18 17), 254 

Home, Sir W., 248 

Horsley, Bishop of Rochester, 92 

Hounslow, dinner, 339 

Howick, early history of, 2-3 ; 
present house built, 109 ; Grey 
established at (1801), 108-9; 
library at, 8, 185, 367 ; Grey at, 
89, 102-3, 108-12, 133-6, 177, 
185, 189, 191, 200, 222-3, 
230-1 ; last years at, 362, 366-9 

Hov^^ick, Lord — title of Grey, 
Charles, 2nd Earl (f.z'.)> from 
April 1806 to Nov. 1807 

Howick, Lord, Henry, afterwards 
3rd Earl Grey (Howick was his 
title, Nov, 1807 to July 1845), 
185-6, 197, 218, 390; his 
elections, 199-200, 223 note, 
298, 358; Free Trade views, 
200 ; in his father's Ministry, 
246, 248, 359-60; Grey's 
letters to, 374; Lady Grey's 
letters to, 376-7 ; note by, on 
dissolution, 1831, 383 

Hownam, Lieutenant, 195, 196 
note 

Hume, Joseph, 254, 389 



Hunt, Henry, Radical, 163, 188, 
250, 269 note, 285 note, 329 

Huskisson, 197 note, 201, 206, 
209, 221 ; Grey's relations to, 
218 and note, 221, 377 

Hutton, William, of Birmingham, 
35 



India : Fox's Bill, 1 3 ; Hastings' 
Trial, 24-6 ; under Grey 
Ministry, 247, 351, 360 

Irish Questions {see also Catholic 
Emancipation) : Under Pitt, 99, 
104, 113-15, 122; under later 
Tories, 170, 177-8, 208-12 
374 ; under Grey Ministry, 241 
note, 249, 250-1, 273, 292, 299, 
357-9' 362-3, 391-2; Ireland 
and the Reform Bill, 273, 281, 
291-3, 299, 300, 349 note 

Italy {see also Naples, Savoy, 
Sicily), lo-ii, 69, 72, 128; 
Italian literature, 10, 106, 115 



James II, 78, loi, 219 

Jeffrey, Francis (of Edinburgh 
Revietv), 80 ; Lord Advocate for 
Scotland, 248, 360 ; part in 
the Reform Bill, 273-4, 298- 
9, 303 note, 344 ; letters of, 
to Grey, 273-4 notes, 315, 344 

Jeffreys, Judge, 253 ; see also 
under Braxfield, Lord 

Jena, 141, 151 

Jenkinson, see Liverpool, Lord 

Johnson, Dr., 7, 35 

Joseph Buonaparte, 147 



Kay, Dr., 337 

Keats, 118 

King's College, Cambridge, Grey 
not at, 8 note ; see Trinity 



INDEX 



Knatchbull, Sir Edward, 239 
Kosciusko, 171 



Lafayette, 219 

Lamb, Charles, 118 

Lamb, Hon. George, brother of 
Lord Melbourne, 188 

Lambton Castle, 187, 367 

Lambton, Charles (died 1831), 
305-6 

Lambton, John George, ist Earl 
Durham ; see also Grey, Lady 
Louisa 

His marriages, 186; early 
relations to Grey and Whigs, 
184, 186-8; duel, 199-200; 
separated from Grey about 
Canning (1827), 201, 205; 
renewed alliance, 221-3 ; be- 
comes Viscount Durham, 221 ; 
place in Grey Ministry, 246-7, 
379 ; helps to prepare Reform 
Bill, 223, 250, 260-4, 271, 275 
notes, 276, 380-2 ; position at 
Court, 277 ; in the Cabinet, 
301-2, 328-9; ill-health and 
family misfortunes, 304-6, 359 ; 
urges Peer-makmg, 331, 333, 
335, 386; relations to King 
Leopold, 352; retirement and 
Earldom (1833), 359 ; Canada, 
186, 367 and note; death and 
funeral, 367 

Later relations with Grey, 
263 note, 304-6, 328 ; rela- 
tions with Brougham, 221 and 
note, 256, 365 ; Grey's letters 
to, 187, 275 and note; letters 
of, 187 note, 188, 221 note, 
380-1 ; otherwise mentioned, 
9, 182, 349 note, 376 
Lambton, William, M.P. (father 
of I St Earl Durham), 4, 8, 9, 36, 
54, 186 



Lancashire, Reform movement, 
(1830-2), 323-5, 344-5 ; see 
also Manchester and Preston 

Lansdowne House, 244, 379 

Lansdowne, ist Marquis (died 
1805), see Shelbume 

Lansdowne, 3rd Marquis of (for- 
merly Lord Henry Petty), in 
Ministry of All the Talents, 
144 ; joins Canning Ministry, 
201, 207 note, 208, 375, 377 ; 
part in formation of Grey 
Ministry, 240, 241 note, 243-4, 
247, 378-9 ; action on Reform 
Bill, 275, 301-2, 349 note, 386 ; 
'against Peer-making, 331, 386; 
invites Grey back (1835), 366 
note ; letters to Grey, 378-9 

Lauder, Sir T. Dick, cited, 284 
note 

Lauderdale, 8th Earl of (died 
i839),44, 62, 88note, 100, 138, 
144, 165, 194; mission to 
France (1806), 150 

Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 305 ; and 
see List of Illustrations 

Lecky, W. H., cited, 14, 123 

Leipsig, 173-4 

Le Marchant (Memoir of Lord 
Althorp), cited, 214 note, 263 
note, 277 note, 364 note 

Leopold, King of the Belgians, 
352-4, 390; letters to Grey, 

354»390 
Lewis, called ' Monk,' no 

Liddell, M.P., 199 

Lieven, Princess, 225-7 and 226 

note, 243 note, 285, 306, 355, 

376 
Lincolnshire, politics (1831), 288 
Littleton, E. J., 234, 238, 363, 

391-2 
Liverpool, Lord (formerly Lord 

Hawkesbury,formerlyJenkinson) 

76,90, 130, 196 and note, 20C-1 



4o6 



INDEX 



Locke, 30, 47 

Londonderry, ist Marquis, see 

Castlereagh 
Londonderry, 3rd Marquis, 295 
Long Parliament, the, 280 
Lonsdale, Lord, 298 
Loughborough, Lord, 52, 56 
Louis XIV, 224 
Louis XVI, 39, 71 
Louis Philippe, King of the French, 

219,259-60,352-3 
Lyndhurst, Lord (Copley), 242 

note, 308-9, 338, 340, 348, 

378-9, 383 



Macaulay, T. B. (Lord), r, 16 
note, 207 note, 213, 252-3, 259, 
268, 282, 283 note, 291, 303, 
311, 314, 329 note, 385 

Mack, General, 140 

Mackintosh, Sir James, 373 

Mackworth, Major, 322 

Maida, battle of, 148 

Majocchi, Theodore {alias ' non 
mi ricordo'), 194-5 

Malmesbury, first Earl, 54-5 

Malmesbury, 3rd Earl, 222-3 

Malta, 130, 147 

Manchester, classes and parties, 42, 
65, 66 note, 289, 325, 344-5 ; 
representation of, 91, 209, 265 

Marengo, 139 

Margaret, Queen of Henry VI, no 

Marylebone, 3 

Melbourne, 2nd Viscount (William 
Lamb), 201 note ; gradual 
union with Whigs (1828-30), 
209, 222, 234, 238 ; Home 
Secretary (1830-4), 247, 250-2, 
255, 286-7, 316 note, 322, 362 
note ; attitude to Reform Bill, 
286-7, 301 ; against Peer- mak- 
ing, 331, 386 ; later years, 366 
note, 367 note 



Mettemich, 174, 355 

Mexico, 152 

Middlesex, representation of, 42,75 

Miguel, Dom, 356-7 

Milton, John, 7, 30, 117 

Milton, Lord (afterwards 3rd Earl 

Fitzwilliam), 318 
Moira, Earl of, 144 
' Monk ' Lewis, see Lewis 
Monroe, President, Grey on, 204, 

374 
Moore, General Sir John, 172 
Morpeth, Lord, see Carlisle, 6th 

Earl 
Muir, Reform martyr, 73, 79—81, 

86 



Nantes, revocation of Edict of, 57 
Napiers, the, 118 
Napier, Capt. Charles, 356 
Napier, Col. William, 320, 325 

note 
Naples, Kingdom of, 147-8 
Napoleon (Buonaparte), 118, 121, 
380 ; Fox's views of, 73, 128—9, 
148-9 ; Grey's views of, 1 28-9, 
150, 174-6, 189; peace and 
war with (1802-5), 128-33, 
139-41 ; Ministry of All the 
Talents, 147-52 ; war with 
(1808-15), 166, 170-6 
Navarino, 228 
Nelson, 118, 131, 139-40 
Nemours, Due de, 259-60, 352 
Netherlands, the, see Belgium 
Newcastle, Duke of, 297, 315-16 
Nicholas, Czar, 355 
Norfolk, nth Duke of, 105 
Norreys, Lord, 123 note 
North, Dudley, M.P., 107 
North, Lord, 12 note, 13, 16 note, 

132 
Northamptonshire election (1831), 
298 



INDEX 



407 



Northumberland {see also Howicfe), 

I, no note; county elections 

for, 1786, II; 1802, 121 note; 

1807,160-2; 1826,199-200; 

county meetings at, 93, 103 ; 

politics of, 63, 93, 196-7, 365-6 
Northumberland, 2nd Duke of 

(died i8i7),93, 160-2 
Northumberland, 3rd Duke of 

(died 1847); (the Lord Percy 

of 1806-7), 160-2, 196, 199 

note, 298 
Norwich, 28, 42 
Nottingham, Reform riots at, 

315-16 
Nugent, Baron, 248 
Nuncomar, 25 



OcKSAKow, 26-7 

O'Connell, Daniel, 'The Libera- 
tor,' 119, 177, 269, 273, 292-3, 

357. 363' 391-2 
' Old Corruption,' 179, 262 note, 

266, 290 
Old Sarum, 91, 265 
Oliver, the spy, 182 note, 187 
Orders in Council, 190 
Oxford University, 8, 210, 289, 

291, 296 



Paine, Tom, 32, 37-42, 49, 63, 
71,77,168,181; Grey'sviews 
on, 46, 53 
Palmer, Reform martyr, 73, 79-8 1 
Palmerston, Lord: Turkey and 
Greece, 228, 230 and note, 
355; gradual union with Whigs, 
(1828-1830), 209, 221-2, 234, 
238; Foreign Minister, 241 
note, 243, 247, 258-9, 304, 
352-7, 379; efforts to have 
Reform Bill modified, 275, 
301-2, 313-14; against Peer- 



making, 331, 386; consents, 
339; invites Grey back (1835), 
366 note 

Otherwise mentioned, 20 1 
note, 300, 384 

Paoli, battle of, 7 

Parkes, Joseph, 327 

Pamell, Sir Henry, 247 

Partington, Mrs., 317 

Peacock's Crotchet Castle, 190 
note 

Pechell, Capt. Sir Samuel, 248 

Pedro, Dom, 356-7 

Peel, Sir Robert, 197 note, 206, 
211, 238, 242, 300, 350, 375; 
reforms Home administration 
(1822-1830), 198, 251, 254; 
helps to abolish religious tests, 
208-9 ; attitude to Reform 
(1830-1832), 234, 269, 281-3, 
288, 329, 332, during 'Days of 
May,' 341 and note, 343, 347 ; 
after 1832, 351, 354, 362, 392 

Pelham, Thomas, 45 note 

Pembroke College, Cambridge, 9 

Peninsular War, 152, 171-3, i77> 
320, 325 note_ 

Penryn, disfranchised, 209 

Perceval, Spencer (Premier 1809- 
1812), 171 note, 177, 180 

Percy, Lord, M.P., see Northum- 
berland, 3rd Duke of 

Perth, 65 

Peterloo, 42, 94, 181-3, 187, 192, 
265, 290 

Philadelphia, 7 

Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter, 316, 

336 

* Pickwick Papers,' 200 

Pitt, I St William, see Chatham, 
Earl of 

Pitt (2nd William, son of Chatham, 
1759-1806), at Cambridge, 9, 
14; Free Trade, 11, 14; rela- 
tions to George III, 13-14* 99» 



4o8 



INDEX 



122-3, 13^ 5 relations to Prince 
and Regency question, 17, 20-1 ; 
Hastings' trial, 25 ; Ocksakow, 
26-7, 227 ; favours Parliamen- 
tary Reform, 31-2, 47, 88, 267 : 
deserts Reform, ,32, 48, 266; 
opposes religious equality, 33 ; 
expects long peace, 36 ; alarmist 
(1792), 48-51, 64-6; negotia- 
tions to broaden Cabinet, 54-6 ; 
relations to Burke, 57, 69 ; rela- 
tions to Portland, 67 ; war begins, 
67—72 ; persecutes Reformers, 
77, 80-3, 86-9, 97 note, 99 ; 
his two ' gagging Acts,' 90-3, 
167 ; suppresses Trade Unions, 
99, 181 ; wishes to weaken 
Toleration Act, 1 00 ; weakens 
on Slave Trade Abolition, 100, 
158 ; deserts Catholic Emanci- 
pation, 114, 122-3, ^3^> 15^5 
passes Union, 114— 5; resigns, 
122—3 ; relations to Addington 
and Grenville, 124-5, 128, 
130-5 ; supports war of 1803, 
130; second ministry (i 804-6). 
136-41 ; subsidy system, 139- 
140, 150; death, 141-2 ; trans- 
forms House of Lords, 288 

Otherwise mentioned, 28, 39, 
62, 103, 106, 117, 192, 198, 
255' 299-300, 351 

Place, Francis, 39, 91 note, 92, 167 
note, 188 ; prepares resistance 
to Belgian war, 235 ; supports 
Reform Bill, 236, 270, 286; 
deputation to Grey, 318-9; 
plans in the ' Days of May,' 220, 
346-7 ; other relations to Whig 
Government, 254—5 

Plunkett, Lord, 249 

' Plymley Letters,' 170 

Poland, 26, 56, 69 ; Grey's sym- 
pathy with, 58-9, 68, 227 note, 
355 



Polignac, 219 

Political Unions, the: (1830), 216 ; 
(1831), 286-7, 314, 321, 324- 
327; (1832), 340, 344-9 

Ponsonby, George, M.P., uncle of 
Lady Grey (died 18 17), 115, 
144, 165, 187, 248; Grey's 
letters to, 154-6, 371 

Ponsonby, George (nephew of 
above ; on Treasury Board in 
Grey's Ministry), 246, 248 

Ponsonby, William, ist Lord 
(created 1806), Grey's father-in- 
law, 113, 115 

Ponsonby (Mrs., afterwards Lady), 
Grey's mother-in-law. Grey's 
letters to, 91, 114 

Poor Law (1834), 351, 361-2 

Pop ham, Sir Home, Admiral, 152 

Person, 8, 1 1 8 

Portland, 3rd Duke of (died 1809), 
21 ; rupture with Reforming 
Whigs, 29, 43-4, 49-50, 52-7, 
61-2, 65—7; personal attach- 
ment to Fox, 66-7 ; joins 
Pitt's Cabinet, 82, 106 ; Prime 
Minister, 158-60, 170-1, 177 

Portland, 4th Duke, 195 note 

Portugal (1833-4), 356-7 

Poulett, Thomson (afterwards 
Lord Sydenham), 248 

Press, the : Tory Press, 64 ; Radical 
Press, suppressed by Pitt, 76-7, 
99 ; gradual revival in 19th 
century, 124, 192; during 
Reform Bill period, 256-7, 
316-7,347 

Preston, 250-1, 267, 283, 324, 
325 note 

Price, Dr., 33 

Priestley, 30* 33» 35"? 

Prussia, 26, 57, 68-72, 139, 173, 
176; Jena, 148, 151 ; threatens 
Belgian Independence (1830—4), 
224, 355 



INDEX 



409 



Pur ley. Diversions of, by Home 

Tooke, 82 
Pytchley Hunt, 214 



Quakers, in Birmingham (1832), 
346 



Ravensworth, Lord, 336 

Reeves' ' Loyal Association,' 34, 62 

Reform, Parliamentary, the move- 
ment (before 1789), 31-2, 88 ; 
(1790-1800), 33-97; (1800- 
1820), 121 note, 142, 169; 
Pitt's Bill of 1785, 31-2; 
Grey's motions (1792-3), 47-8, 
7 5-6 ; report on representation 
(1793), 60-1, 73-5, 96 note ; 
Grey's motion for Bill (1797), 
94-6 ; Grey's public declara- 
tions on (1802), 121 note; 
(1810), 169-70, 215; (1830), 
235 ; Grey's private letters on 
(1817-30), 180, 183, 237 note, 
371-3; progress of (1817-30), 
182-3, 201-3, 205, 209, 215, 
267 ; stimulus of events in 1830, 
215-7, 219-24, 236-7; atti- 
tude of Canningites, Stanley and 
Graham, 233-4, 238-9 ; Duke's 
declaration against Reform, 236, 
264 ; Brougham's motion, 234, 
239-40 

Reform Bills of 1831-2, men- 
tioned, 34, 40, 48, 87, 177, 183, 
198, 211, 217, 220, and Book 
III, chaps, i-v passim ; origin of, 
in Grey's mind (1820), 183, 
373 ; preliminary conversations 
on, 221-4, 264; preparation of 
Bill, 239, 250, 256, 261-71, 
380-2; its provisions con- 
sidered, 264-72 ; Schedules A 
and B, 177, 183, 240, 267 note. 



281, 294, 297, 320, 329, 338; 
Scotch and Irish Bills, 273-4, 
349 note ; second edition of 
Bill (after general election, 183 1), 
301—3 ; Chandos clause added 
(August 1831), 288; Bin lost 
in Lords (Oct. 1831), 306-10; 
third edition of Bill (Dec. 1 83 1), 
329—30; amendment on pro- 
cedure in Lords causes ' Days 
of May' (1832), 338-9; Bill 
passed, 349 ; historical con- 
sequences, 350—1, 369 

Reform Bill of 1 867, 270, 272, 342 

Reggioin Calabria, 148 

Reynolds, 9, 16 

Rhine, the, 63, 174-5 

Ribblesdale, Lord, 323 

Richardson, Joseph, M.P., 107 

Richmond, 3rd Duke of, 47,75,81 

Richmond, 5th Duke of, 241 note, 
247, 275, 295, 301, 331, 339, 
357»_362, 386 

Robespierre, 82 

Robinson, Lionel, his Princess 
Lieven cited, 226 note 

Rochdale, 329^ 335 , 

Rockingham, Marquis of, 12 note, 

13 

RoUe, John, M.P., 18, 22 

Ro Iliad, the, 12, 18 

Romilly, Sir Samuel (died 1818), 
167, 187-8 

Romney, 9, 16, and see List of 
Illustrations 

Rosslyn, Lord, 376-7 

Rousseau, 16 

Rowlandson, 8 

Russell, Lord John (son of 6th 
Duke of Bedford), 49, 73, 113 
note, 228, 355, 375, 384; early 
motions for Parliamentary Re- 
form, 182, 209, 267, 372 ; Test 
Act, 208-9 '•> ''^ Reform Minis- 
try, 248 ; helps prepare the 



4IO 



INDEX 



Bill, 250, 261-4, 271, 380-2 ; 
introduces the Bill, 279-82, 
302-3, 329; in Cabinet, 302, 
334-5 ; views on Grey's part 
in Bill, 261, 264; Irish policy, 
357, 362 

Russells, the, 49, 98, 204 

Russia {see also Poland), Ocksakow 
affair, 26-7 ; against French 
Revolution, 68-9 ; Czar of, 77, 
140 ; during Napoleonic wars, 
139-40, 148, 173, 176 ; Grey's 
relations to, at Foreign Office 
(1806-7), 150-2 ; Grey's views 
on(i8i3-i5),i73,i76; (1821- 
30), 227-30 ; (1830-4), 355-6 ; 
Belgian question, 224-5, 259, 
355 ; Turkish question, 227-30, 

355-6 
Rydal Water, 262 note 



Sacheverel, Dr., 34 

Sadler, Michael, 360-1 

St. Anne's Hill, Fox's residence, 98, 
101-2, 133 

St. Stephen's Chapel, 280 

St. Vincent, Lord, 145, 172 

Saragossa, 172 

Sarum, Old, see Old Sarum 

Savoy, 63 

Scheldt, the, 68 

Scotland, Parliamentary representa- 
tion, 74, 78, 273-4, 299 ; muni- 
cipal government, 78, 273, 351, 
360 ; politics and repression in, 
65, 78—81 ; Scotland during 
Reform Bill, 273-4, 281,298-9, 
315, 343-6, 349 note; Grey's 
visit (1834), 365-6 

Scott, Sir Walter, 112 note, 147, 
219, 299; Antiquary, ill; 
Pirate, 112 note 

Secession, the (1797— 1 801), 94, 
96-102, 113-14, 121 



Sefton, Lord, 257 

Sellis, suicide, 167 and note 

September Massacres, the, 58, 

71 
Shaftesbury, ist Earl {temp, 

Charles II), loi 
Shaftesbury, 7th Earl, 361 
Shakespeare, 6-7, 335 
Sheffield, radicalism of, 42, 254, 

345 

Sheffield, Lord, 51-2 

Shelbume, Earl of, ist Marquis of 
Lansdowne, 12, 13, 50, 56, 105 

Shelley, 118, 139, 337 

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (died 
1816), 12, 17, 108; regencyand 
Mrs. Fitzherbert, 19, 21-3 ; 
Hastings' trial, 25 ; adheres 
to Reformers, 51, 61—2, 64, 
87 ; attends Parliament during 
' Secession,' 98, 100 ; bad terms 
with Grey, 23, 125-7; influ- 
ence at Carlton House, 126-7, 
178; Ministry of All the 
Talents, 144 

Shropshire, Reform riots, 323 

Sicily, 147-8, 150 

Sidmouth, ist Viscount, J^^Adding- 
ton 

Six Acts (Castlereagh's), 181, 265 

Slavery, abolition of, movement 
for, 80, 190, 219; passed, 351, 
359-60 

Slave Trade Abolition ; opposed 
by George III, 14, 55, 360; 
opposed by Portland Whigs, 5 5 ; 
partly deserted by Pitt, 100,143 ? 
passed by Whigs and Gren- 
villites, 143, 147, 158-9, 360 

Smith, Sir Sidney, Admiral, 3 80 

Smith, Rev. Sydney, 73, 118, 160, 
170, 281 note, 317-18 

Smith, William, Fox's letters to, 
121, 135 

Sophocles, loi 



INDEX 



Southey, Robert, 103 

Spain, 52, 128, 152; (1808-14), 
1 7 1-3 ; invasion by French re- 
actionaries (18 2 3), 204, 373-4; 
Whig and Tory politics r^, 3 56-7 

Spencer, 2nd Earl, 52, 106, 133-4, 

I44» 157 

Spencer, Lord Robert, 61, 107, 
108 note 

Spencer Walpole, 350 

Spenser, poet of the Faery Queen, 
98, 108 

Spring Rice, T. (afterwards ist 
Lord Monteagle), 248, 366 note 

Staffordshire riots, 323 

Stanhope, 3rd Earl, 105 

Stanley, Hon. E. G. (afterwards 
14th Earl Derby, Conser/ative 
Premier), attaches himself to 
Whigs, 221 and note, 222, 234, 
239; Irish Secretary, 249-51, 
292, 357-9» 363* 384; enters 
Cabinet, 302 ; part in Reform 
Bill controversies, 250, 331, 
343 ; abolishes slavery as Colo- 
nial Secretary, 359-60; resigns, 
362-3, Grey's letter to, 357 

Stowe (seat of Grenville family), 
134 note 

Stowell, Lord, 206 

Sully, 226 

Sunderland, cholera at, 322 

Sunderland, 2nd Earl {temp. 
James II), loi 

Sussex, Duke of, son of George III, 
197. 349 note, 390 

Swinburne, Sir John, 93, 161 

* Swing, Captain,' 238, 323 

Switzerland, 10, 128 

Sydenham (Lord), see Poulett 
Thomson 



Tacitus, 7, 98 
Talavera, 172 



411 

Talleyrand, Prince, 150, 223 and 

note, 259-60,353 
Tamworth Manifesto, 198 
Tankerville, Lord, 222-3, 3^6 
Tarleton, Col., M.P. (General Sir 

Banastre), 88, 146 note 
Taunton, Reform meeting, 317 
Tavistock, Grey sits for, 162 
Taylor, Sir Herbert, 277, 312 and 

note, 349, 384, 386-7 
Taylor, John, of Norwich, 28 
Tell, William, 30, 171 
Test Act, 33, 35, 55, 201, 208-9 
Thanet, 9th Earl of (died 1825), 

105-6, 126, 195 
Thelwall, Radical lecturer, 81, 88, 

Theocritus, loi 

Therond, Mr., 8 note 

Thessaly, 230 

Tiemey, George (died Jan. 1830), 
correspondence with Grey, 59— 
61,111,164; does not' secede,' 
98 ; breach with Fox and Grey, 
126-7; Ministry of All the 
Talents, 144 ; opposition again, 
162, 164-5, 187-8, 213 note; 
joins Canning's Ministry, 201 

Times, The, 252, 256-7, 347 

Toleration Act, Pitt's designs 
against, 100 

Tooke, Rev. Home, 39 ; trial of, 
81-2, 87-8, 254 

Torrens, Col., 320—1 

Torrens, Life of Melbourne, 328 
note 

Toulon, watch off, 131 

Townshend, Lord John, M.P., 107 

Townshend, Lord, 88 

Trade Unions, 41 ; Pitt's Combina- 
tion Acts against, 99-100, 181 ; 
repealed, 198-9 ; trade union- 
ism under Grey Ministry, 238, 
255, 346 note, 362 note 

Trafalgar, 140 



412 



INDEX 



Trevelyan, Sir George Otto, of 

Wallington, 199 note 
Trevelyan, Sir John, of Wallington, 

103 

Trinity College, Cambridge (Grey 
at), 8-10, (Lord Howick at), 
197 

Tuileries, the, 57 

Turkey {see Greece and Russia), 
Pitt defends, 26-7 ; British in 
Dardanelles, 152 ; Grey's policy 
to (1821-34), 226-30, 355-6 

Turner, ]. M. W., 118 

Twickenham Park, i c6 note 

Tyburn, 3 

Tyneside (183 1-2), 346 note 



Ulm, 140 

Unitarians, 35, 37, 55 note 

Utrecht, Treaty of, 330 



Valley Forge, 7 

Valmy, battle of, 59 

Vanity Fair, Lord Steyne, original 

of, 153, 268 note 
Vernon Smith, 248 
Verona, Grey at, 1 1 ; Congress at, 

.204, 374 
Victoria, Queen, 40, 352 
Vienna, Treaties of, 224, 227 
Villeneuve, Admiral, 139 
Vinegar Hill, battle of, 113 
Voltaire, 16, 30 



Wagram, battle of, 166 

Wales, 74, 281, 267 note, 294 

Wallace, 171 

Wallas, Graham, 97 note, 328 note 

Walpole, Sir Robert, 30 

Wardle, Gwyllym Llovd, M.P., 

166-8 
Waterloo, 175-7, 180, 210 



Waverers, the (183 1-2), 327, 330,1 

333*336,338 i 

Webster, Lady, see Holland, Ladyi 
Wellesley, Marquis, Richard ' 
(Governor-General of India), 
4-5, 175, 177, 187 note, 248-9, 
349 note ; Lord-Lieutenant, Ire- 
land, 249, 363, 391-2 ; Grey's 
letters to, 285, 301 note, 382, 
391-2 
Wellington, Duke of (Arthur Wel- 
lesley), 70, 1 18-19, ^^^3' 205 
note, 219 note, 279, 392 ; 
Peninsula and Waterloo, 152, 
172-3, 175-6; Queen's trial, 
194, 195 note; breach with 
Canning, 201 ; passes Catholic 
Emancipation, 177, 208—12; 
breaks up Tory party, 207—12 ; 
reactionary foreign policy as 
Minister, 212, 225 and note, 
229—30, 235; position in new 
reign (1830), 218-20, 222, 276 ; 
fall of (Nov. 1830), 233-40, 
256, 264, 378 ; reactionary for- 
eign policy in opposition, 353-4, 
355, 389 ; opposes Reform Bill, 
282 note, 283, 291, 313-15, 
320, 327—8, 383 ; demands sup- 
pression of Political Unions, 
326-7; his attitude to Wham- 
clifFe negotiations, 327—8 ; in 
' Days of May,' 338-44, 346-8, 

Question of Grey joining 

(1828-30), 211-12, 218, 376- 

378 ; personal relations to Grey, 

163, 1 84 note, 377-8 
Westminster constituency, 42, 160- 

161, 188, 267, 270 and note, 

283 
Wetherell, Sir Charles, 239, 283, 

303, 321-2 
Weyman, Stanley, CAippinge, 322 

note 



INDEX 



Whamcliffe, Lord, 294-5, 327-9, 

331. 336, 338,387 

Whig Club Banquets, 126, 163 

Whitbread, Samuel, M.P. (died 
1815), 4, 6, 9, 36, 100; during 
Ministry of All the Talents, 1 44- 
145, 150; in opposition again, 
165-8; Grey's letters to, in, 
126, 145, 150 

Whitelock, General, 152 

Wilkes, 42 

Wilberforce, William, 83, 114, 
129, 138, 219; criticism of 
Pitt, 14, 51 note, 100, 266; 
approves Reform Bill, 266 note 

William III, 15, 105 

William IV, 178 ; character of, 
217; accession, 217-18, 265; 
visit to city postponed, 338 ; 
sends for Grey, 240, 241 note ; 
on retrenchment, 255-6 ; accepts 
Reform Bill, 269, 275-8 ; dis- 
solves, 292-6 ; 382-3 ; his sup- 
port of Bill weakens, 300-2, 304; 
Peer-making, 312-13, 331-5, 
385-8; objects to Political 
Unions, 325-6, 348 ; ' Days of 
May,' 339-43> 347-9' 388-90 ; 
dislikes Whig foreign policy, 
353, 356 and note ; invites Grey 
back (1835), 366; relations to 
Grey, 246, 250-1, 253, 277-8, 
293, 378 ; Grey's letters to, 293 

Williams, boroughmonger, 267 
note 

Wilson, General Sir Robert, 188-9 

Winchelsea, Borough of, 200 

Winchelsea, Lord, 210 



Winchester, Assize of (1830), 253 
Winchester, Marquis of, 248 
Windham, William (died 18 10), 
early liberalism of, 3 1 and note ; 
opposes Reformers, 52, 62, 67, 
87 ; with Grenville after Amiens, 
128-9, 134 ; ii^ All tlie Talents, 
his Army Bill, 143-4; opposes 
abolition of slave trade, 158 
Windsor, 4, 250, 321, 339, 388 
Wobum, 107 

Wood, Charles (afterwards ist 
Viscount Halifax), 304 note, 
336; letter to Grey on EUice, 

384 
Woolbeding, 108 
Worcester, anti-clericalism at, 316- 

317 
Wordsworth, 8, 72, 81-2, loi 

note, 1 17-18, 131, 142, 148, 

262, 310 
Wyndford, Lord, 383 
Wynn, Charles, 245 note, 247 
Wyvill, Yorkshire Reformer, 13, 

20,32,77, 124,207 



Yarborough, Lord, 297 and note 
Yarmouth, Lord, see Hertford, 

3rd Marquis of 
York, Duke of, Frederick Augustus, 

son of George III (died 1827), 

143, 166-8 
Yorkshire Reformers, 13, 31-2, 

77, 93; in 1830-2, 344-5 
Yorkshire, representation of, 75, 

161, 219 and note 
Young, Tom, 286 



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